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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



GIANT HOURS WITH POET PREACHERS 

12mo. NET, $1.00 




"I've read it by moonlight' 



STAR DUST FROM 
THE DUGOUTS 

A RECONSTRUCTION BOOK 



BY 
WILLIAM L. STIDGER 

INTRODUCTION BY 
PETER CLARK MACFARLANE 

ILLUSTRATED BY 

JESSIE GILLESPIE 



map 



THE ABINGDON PRESS 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 






Copyright, 1919, by 
WILLIAM L. STIDGER 



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©C1.A535149 



To 
My Two Girls 
Iva and Betty 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

Introduction 11 

Foreword 13 

I. What is Coming Out of It? — The Soldier and a 

Sermon 23 

II. The Dominie "Down the Line" — The Soldier 

— His Attitude toward the Chaplain 45 

III. The Morning Watch— The Soldier— His Attitude 

toward Prayer 74 

IV. "When a Man's Alone"— The Soldier— What 

He Prayed 90 

V. The Angelus in War Time — The Soldier — When 

He Prayed 106 

VI. The Brewery Gang— The Soldier— His Attitude 

toward the Preacher Who Served 128 

VII. The Big Brother of the Khaki — The Soldier 

—His Attitude toward the Y. M. C. A 144 

VIII. The Book and the Boy— The Soldier— His 

Attitude toward the Bible 161 

IX. "I'm For Him!"— The Soldier— His Attitude to- 
ward the Christ 177 

X. The New Calvary— The Soldier— His Attitude 

toward the Cross 187 

XL The Union Sacred — The Soldier — His Attitude 

toward Church Unity 209 

XII. Linking the Boy Up with the Church 223 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

"I've read it by moonlight" Frontispiece 

PAGE 

The soldier in France was a good listener 23 

"We lifted the stretcher with the colonel in it to the top 

of the parapet" 45 

"Another minute and my boys would be going over" . . 74 

"And grant me grace through the fleeting hours to be 

A MAN — and unashamed" 90 

"You two — you two — are all I have — " 106 

"You'll have known what it is to do hard physical labor 

for somebody else" 128 

"I am going to town, Doc. . . . But I'm only going to 

get my pants pressed" 144 

"You bet your life they read it" 161 

"I knew you'd come, Tom!" 177 

"On a tree such as this Jesus was crucified" 187 

"This is no time for formalities" 209 

Every mother's son of them will want to talk over 

their experiences 224 



INTRODUCTION 

The author of this book is himself a speck 
of Star Dust. He is a big, husky fellow with a 
big heart. His warm, impulsive nature sent 
him to France, leaving a wife and baby behind 
him. There that same nature sent him into 
the line of duty at the far front. He drove a 
truck that carried "Y" supplies to the farther- 
most ditch. Night after night he took his load 
out through the darkness over the shell-torn 
roads and through the hail of shells themselves. 
He was sometimes frightened, he was frequently 
in danger, but he always delivered the load. 
Between whiles he helped to bring in the 
wounded and did a Christian shepherd's duty in 
the hospitals. There were strains, excitements, 
tragedies. But the whole big business of war, 
the vast enginery of battle, never distracted this 
lovable man a moment from his supreme in- 
terest in what was interesting the khaki cogs in 
this great machine. He saw them not as cogs 
but as men, and he saw into them. I used to 
think the deepest thing I saw in France was 

11 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

mud, but Stidger was always seeing the deeps 
in hearts. He has touched this war with his 
human hands; he has measured the current of 
its emotions through his heart, and some of 
that touch, of that measure, is here in the book, 
told with a simple sincerity that is power. 

Peter Clark MacFarlane. 



12 



FOREWORD 

This is a reconstruction book. It is not 
intended to be a storybook, although great 
human emotions, soul crises, and triumphant 
spiritual victories must necessarily be illus- 
trated with human-interest experiences. It is 
intended for a particular audience. 

This particular audience is the preacher and 
the church worker, together with the parents 
in the American home who wish to understand 
the kind of men who are coming back to them 
from France; those folks who have a tremendous 
desire to do the highest and best thing for the 
soldier. 

The spiritual world in America — and that 
includes the home, the school, and the church 
— has facing it and clamoring for attention 
the supreme opportunity of all the ages. It 
is an opportunity made to hand. It is the 
opportunity of two million boys who have 
been in France and who have had either a 
conscious or an unconscious change of heart 
because of all the eventful things that have 

13 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

happened in their lives during the past two 
years; a change of heart in relation to several 
of the most vital things of life and eternity; 
a change of heart toward religion, the Bible, the 
church, the minister who represents the church, 
God the Father, and the Christ. 

One tries to catch a figure of speech that 
will burn the thing that he is trying to say 
into the hearts of those who are responsible 
for the spiritual welfare of the world. One 
thinks of the trite figure of the "fields ripe 
unto the harvest," but that is a hackneyed 
figure, and it is not strong enough. He wants 
something that will shake the world awake 
to the consciousness of the fact which even 
this trite figure partly expresses. Then one 
turns to the figure of heated white metal 
— white with new experiences, white with great 
resolves, white with new ideals; white with 
the heat of a new passion for democracy and 
brotherhood, ready to be molded. But he 
dismisses that figure, for it does not seem to 
one who has come to know the boys "over 
there" that they are going to be molded. They 
are, rather, going to mold! They are the 

14 



FOREWORD 

leaven that will leaven the life of America 
during the next fifty years. 

Therefore since they are not going to be 
molded, but are going to mold, pray God that 
the church of America will have the "high look" 
in its eyes; pray God that when these boys 
step into the churches, their souls on fire with 
a high, deep, broad and abiding faith, 
there may be no cold, narrow, prejudiced 
atmosphere to dampen their passion or drive 
them away from its altars to do their work 
and live their lives elsewhere. 

So one is forced to the figure which suggests the 
title of this book, "Star Dust from the Dugouts." 
It is borrowed from Sam Walter Foss, he who 
wrote "The House by the Side of the Road." 
Somehow this great, virile man's poet expresses 
the very thing that one wants to say in a 
reconstruction book: that there is an army of 
men coming back from France: American 
men; men, with possibilities in their souls of 
becoming the "Large Heroic Fellows Yet to 
Be"; an army of men, coming back and to 
come back, who are verily the "Star Dust" out 
of which the stars of the future are to be made. 

15 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

"There are large, heroic fellows 

Making music hereabouts 
And large, heroic men are yet to be; 
And long shall be the long, long years 

Before the breed runs out; 
Strong as iron in the mountains, 
Clean as saltness in the sea! 

"There was workmanship put in it 

And the world was made to last; 
And it wears as well to-day as hitherto; 
And the large heroic fellows 
That it made there in the past 
It shall match them and o'er top them with the 
new. 

"From the star dust of wide spaces 
Did the mighty worlds cohere 
And there's star dust for a million worlds to be; 
There are many things that happen in the long 
platonic year. 
There are new stars, yet unmolded, that the com- 
ing days will see. 

"The cosmic stuff of men and stars the years will 

not debase, 

And greater stars than throng the skies shall newly 

loom in space; 

16 



FOREWORD 

And greater men than e'er have been shall yet re- 
deem the race; 
There are large, heroic fellows yet to be!" 

These are "the large, heroic fellows yet to 
be"; these are the men with the dreams; these 
are the men who "Will yet redeem the race" 
if we, the church, we, the preachers, we, the 
men and women of the homes of America, do 
not, with our bickerings and our quarrels, our 
little dreams and our little souls, our inter- 
pretation of the gospel of Christ as a selfish 
saving of our own souls, to the exclusion of 
its power to redeem social and industrial life, 
dampen the passion of their dreams as they 
step into our homes and our churches. 

One evening in our prayer meeting, since I 
have returned from France, I was speaking 
on the "high look" in the eyes of the boys — 
that "high look" of which Poet Oxenham 
speaks. A young and yet very thoughtful 
girl, whose brother is "over there," arose in 
the meeting and said, "The thing that I am 
worrying about is not whether the 'high look' 
will be in the eyes of our boys who are in 

17 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

France, but whether we, the churches, we, the 
wives, we, the sisters, we, the mothers, we, the 
fathers, we, the sweethearts, will have the 
'high look' in our own eyes to meet the 'high 
look' in their eyes when they come home." 

One finds this thought expressed everywhere 
by writers who are now returned from France; 
men and women who have carefully, thought- 
fully and sympathetically studied this boy of 
ours over there all during the war. One has 
hardly been able to pick up a secular magazine 
during the past year that he has not found such 
titles as "What Our Boys Will Be Like When 
They Come Home," and always the words that 
follow have been spiritual words and spiritual 
prophecies. That is a singularly striking thing 
to find in our secular magazines, but it is 
there. 

Perhaps the whole matter is summed up by 

Mrs. Grace Richmond in a recent number of 

The Ladies' Home Journal, in a verse which 

expresses a challenge to the American heart 

to have the "high look" worthy to meet the 

"high look" in the eyes of our boys who are 

coming back home. 

18 



FOREWORD 
WHEN OUR BOYS COME BACK 

"Somehow they'll all be different — 

O God, we know it well! 
They're not the same who went away 

To fight the fires of hell. 
Their boyish eyes — now eyes of men — 

Will look us through and through, 
To see if what has come to us 

Has made us different too. 

"O, they will have new standards then, 

These changed, new boys of ours, 
And by them they will measure us, 

With all their strange, new powers; 
They'll find if we are petty still, 

And narrow, and unfair, 
And in that searching gaze of theirs 

We'll feel our souls laid bare. 

"Against that Day of Judgment Days 
We must make ready fast, 

Lest they shall be ashamed of us 
When they come home at last; 

For we should drink of sorrow, 
Yes, the very deepest cup, 

If in that Day, in their clear eyes, 

We could not measure up!" 
19 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

Out of the boy in France the future of the 
nations is to be made. He is the force with 
which the future of the church must reckon. 
No narrow selfish interpretation of the gospel 
of Christ will make any appeal to him. 

The author of this book desires to thank The 
Outlook for permission to use "The Morning 
Watch"; The Independent for permission to 
use "The Dominie Down The Line," "The 
Brewery Gang," and "The Angelus"; The 
Christian Advocate for permission to use the 
sermon included in the first chapter of this 
book. 

He further wishes to acknowledge the per- 
mission to quote from John Oxenham, which 
has been granted by The George H. Doran 
Company, of New York; publishers of The 
Fiery Cross, The Vision Splendid, and All's 
Well; from Private Peat, which is granted by 
The American Magazine; from Coningsby 
Dawson, which is granted by the publisher of 
Carry On, The John Lane Company of New 
York; the beautiful poem in the introduction 
by Grace Richmond which appeared first in 

The Ladies' Home Journal. 

20 



FOREWORD 

He also desires to express appreciation for 
permission to use that portion of the chapter 
on the Y. M. C. A. which first appeared in The 
Epworth Herald, and that portion of the chap- 
ter on "The New Calvary" which was printed 
by The Methodist Review. 



21 



The soldier in France 
was a good listener 




CHAPTER I 
WHAT IS COMING OUT OF IT? 

The Soldier and a Sermon 

The soldier in France was a good listener. 
He seemed hungry for anything that had the 
slightest suggestion of spiritual value in it. 
He usually wanted what he called a real "hon- 
est-to-God sermon." If he went to a religious 
service and did not get a sermon, he was dis- 
appointed. "Let's stick to the religious stuff," 
is a phrase that Dean Birney, of the Boston 
Theological School, brings back to us, and 
that phrase expresses the common and yet the 

23 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

uncommon experience of all of us who at- 
tempted to preach to the boys. They preferred 
straight preaching. They didn't want silly, 
sentimental talk about their souls. They 
wanted man-to-man talk about Christ, and 
decent living, and home, and brotherhood, and 
justice, and God — the things for which they 
were fighting. 

One great preacher, who had been misled 
in Paris through wrong advice, got the idea 
that religion was taboo on all days except 
Sunday, and therefore he gave a secular lec- 
ture. He soon found out that he had been 
misled when a boy said to one of the Y. M. 
C. A. secretaries: "Gosh! I went to hear that 
preacher because I had known of him at home, 
and I had a right to hear something about 
religion, but he gave us a lecture. I wanted 
to hear him preach. Certainly, if we needed 
good, old-fashioned preaching at home, we 
need it a darned sight more here!" 

I include in this book, as its first chapter, 
a sermon. It is the humble effort of a humble 
Methodist minister who went to France to 
serve rather than to preach. But out of his 

24 



WHAT IS COMING OUT OF IT? 

serving he found this sermon and then when 
he was called upon to do so he preached it 
to the boys. He had only one sermon. He 
took a good many with him but tore them up. 
This one he found in the trenches and trucks, 
troubles and temptations of the front line. 
He gives it, not because of any special merit 
in it, but more because of the lack of any dis- 
tinctive claim to its being a great sermon. 
It may serve to show the attitude of the soldier 
in France toward a rather ordinary, average 
sermon. 

A Sermon to American Soldiers 
Overseas 

You men who are fighting this war in France 
have a right to ask whether or not God caused 
the war; and if he did not cause the war, 
you have a right to ask what he is going to 
do about it, now that man has caused it. I 
am going to try to answer those questions 
for you this night. 

Some time before we get through I am going 
to give you the text of my sermon. I may 
give it to you in the middle of the sermon and 

25 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

I may wait until the end. In either case it will 
stay longer with you for my not having started 
off with it. But there is one thing that I 
want to warn you of at the beginning, and 
that is that I do not share the opinion of some 
folks that you do not want to hear a straight, 
honest-to-goodness, regular man-to-man ser- 
mon, just like you used to want back home, 
with a man's Christ in it; a man's Christ, 
who is a man's Friend wherever he is, at 
home or across the seas; Lincoln's Christ, 
Cromwell's Christ, General Foch's Christ, Gen- 
eral Pershing's Christ. I am going to talk 
about him before I am through; and since I 
know that you fellows are the same lads that 
you were back home I am proud to bring to 
you the Christ of your boyhood, the Christ 
of your mother's love and your mother's 
prayers, and just now the Christ of your 
mother's loneliness. 

Was This War God's Fault? Was this war 
God's fault? Thomas Tiplady answers that 
question with a beautiful figure that you will 
never forget. Tiplady is up there now, some- 
where in the Somme battle line, with his Tom- 

26 



WHAT IS COMING OUT OF IT? 

mies. He is a Methodist chaplain, and he 
has been in it all for three years. 

It was evening. The chaplain had been 
down in a communication trench with some 
of the boys holding a little communion service. 
They were returning home about sunset. 
Suddenly over their heads a big Jack Johnson 
whined its hating way, and burst not far from 
them on their front. It was a dirty black 
cloud of smoke that it sent into the evening 

sky. 

To Chaplain Tiplady this was symbolic of 
the war. War is dirty. War is full of hate 
and littleness and pettiness and hurt and 
harm and pain and cruelty and dearth and 
death. We are men here in this hut and we 
are not afraid to speak the truth, and we know 
that that is the truth. War is mud and cold, 
and snow, and rain, and pneumonia, and 
wounds. Nobody can tell us that it isn't, 
for we have been there and we know. That 
black cloud well symbolized war. 

God did not make that black cloud. Man 
made it. Man's selfish ambitions; his greed; 
the Kaiser's desire to rule the world; the 

27 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

Kaiser's inordinate, ridiculous, insane egotism 
made the war. God had nothing to do with 
it. Man made it. Man set it there. 

But God does have something to do with 
what is daily coming out of the war. 

As the chaplain and his group of boys 
watched that cloud, suddenly the red sun, 
which was blood red, a war sun, slowly turned 
that unfolding black cloud which man had 
made, into a beautiful pink. As the winds of 
evening blew, that cloud of smoke unfolded 
in the shape of a great Rose and then turned 
from pink to a deep red under the war sun. 
Man had made that black cloud, but God 
turned it into a beautiful rose. 

Man makes war. God has nothing to do 
with it, but he is going to turn the war into 
something great, something high and heroic. 

We are going now to see what God is making 
out of this war. 

When I came to France I came "to speak 
in the camps." But when I got here I asked 
to be sent to the front lines to work. I didn't 
feel qualified to speak to you fellows who are 
bearing the brunt of the battle until I had 

28 



WHAT IS COMING OUT OF IT? 

lived with you in the trenches. I spent six 
weeks driving a truck down on the Toul line 
with our American boys, and out of that expe- 
rience I speak. 

I brought some carefully written sermons 
over with me on the boat to preach to you, 
but I tore them up down there on the front 
lines one evening, and I said to myself, "If 
I ever speak to the boys it will be out of the 
white fire of my own experience here in France." 
I come to you in that spirit to-night. 

Lesson the First: Respect for the Things 
Back Home. First, out of this war God is 
teaching us a new respect for the things and 
the folks back home. 

I read in the Stars and Stripes a few weeks 
ago the confession of a soldier who said: "Well, 
I've got more respect for my wife than I ever 
had before in all my life. How in the world 
a woman will live a lifetime with a man and 
wash dishes three times a day without re- 
belling I don't know. I never knew what a 
slave's task washing dishes was until I got 
to France and had to wash my own mess kit." 

That is a humorous expression of something 
29 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

that you fellows feel every day of your lives 
as you take the westward, homeward look. 
You are beginning to see that those folks back 
home are about the finest people in this old 
world. You are beginning to see that little 
things which you thought were disagreeable in 
them have all disappeared and only the lov- 
able things, only the heroic things, only the 
sweetest things stand out in your memories. 

Out of this experience you are beginning 
to have a new respect for the social customs, 
for the sanitary laws, for the ways of your 
nation and your home. You are beginning 
to know that, after all, the good old United 
States of America has some laws of sanitation 
that you had not noticed until you came to 
France and slept in a French barn above a 
manure pile. You are beginning to love as 
never before your America: its green hills, its 
white peaks, its crystal rivers, its blooming or- 
chards, its white sea sands; its folks, its ways, 
its homes. 

Lesson the Second: A Great New World 
Brotherhood. You fellows have found out that 
there are other fine men in the world in addi- 

30 



WHAT IS COMING OUT OF IT? 

tion to Americans. You have learned to re- 
spect the Tommy and the French soldier. 
You have seen him fight. You have known 
that he has no such thing as cowardice in his 
make-up. You have come to find out that 
the English Tommy is one of the finest fel- 
lows on earth. Some of you young officers 
trained with him up there on the British front, 
and you came back with a wholesome respect 
for him and he for you. 

One night I was in a Young's Men's Chris- 
tian Association hut. There was an English 
Tommy there in Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation uniform. He had been invalided from 
the English army, after having been in it for 
three years. He was gassed in the early part 
of the war, when they didn't know much about 
gas and only had those rag respirators. He 
couldn't keep out of it, so he came to the 
Young Men's Christian Association. I slept 
with him that night down at General Pershing's 
headquarters at Chaumont. He was only 
twenty-eight years of age, but, as he said to 
me before we slept, "Yank, I'm an old man, 
and I have a wife and three babies." And 

31 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

he was an old man — an old man because the 
gas had gotten him. He coughed all night 
long. I think there was not a minute when 
he was not coughing. I thought he would 
tear his lungs out the way he coughed. My 
heart ached for him. It was terrifically cold 
there in that room, for it was February and 
a blizzard was blowing outside. I went to 
sleep, aching for that fine lad. In the middle 
of the night I awoke, shivering with the cold 
and with his cough rasping my ears and 
my heart. I carelessly said: "I never was so 
cold, Tommy. I never knew in my life before 
that a fellow can shiver inside as well as out- 
side." He laughed between his coughs and we 
went to sleep again. I woke about three 
o'clock in the morning and felt much warmer. 
I wondered why that was when the English 
lad's coughing started again. Then I dis- 
covered that that rascal had gotten up in the 
night and had thrown two of his meager 
blankets over me. I got up and put them 
back arid said, "You're crazy, man! You, 
a sick man, coughing your lungs out, and still 
you would get up in the cold night and put 

32 



WHAT IS COMING OUT OF IT? 

your blankets over me. I'll beat you if you 
do that again!" 

"Yes, Yank, but I'm used to the cold and 
you're not." 

Yes, the more that we see of this British 
Tommy the more we respect him. This great 
new brotherhood is coming out of the great 
war. 

And there is a new brotherhood with the 
French. At first you did not understand him. 
Of course you knew that a million of the 
finest young men of France had paid the last 
penalty, had made the great sacrifice. You 
knew of the Marne and you knew of Verdun, 
but it took seeing them in real action to clinch 
that brotherhood. You fellows remember the 
night that you went into the trenches to take 
their place down at Toul. You remember in 
the darkness, where you dared not speak, the 
pressures of French hand clasps, and, some- 
times, much to your embarrassment, those 
twin kisses that you got on both cheeks. 

Then one day you saw these same French 
soldiers drilling. You had thought up to that 
time that you were pretty well trained your- 

33 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

self, but you had the experience that a young 
soldier friend of mine had when he saw a 
French regiment drilling for the first time. 
He said: "I used to think that I was some 
soldier, but after seeing them guys I'm nothing 
but a Kansas farmer after this." You have 
come to respect these men. 

You remember that day down on the Toul 
line, when you were having your first hard 
scrap with the Boche, that day when Archie 
Roosevelt was wounded. When you runners 
came back to report to headquarters you 
know what they saw back there in the grass, 
for those same runners told you when they 
returned to the trenches, and the report of 
what they had seen flashed down along your 
line like an electric wave, and it sent a thrill 
of brotherhood through you. That runner 
told you that a whole regiment of Frenchmen 
were back there in the grass, lying on their 
bellies, their shrewd, well-trained war eyes 
peering out over you. If you needed them, 
they were there. That was all. Those expe- 
rienced fighters were there to back you up. 
Thank God you didn't need them. You 

34 



WHAT IS COMING OUT OF IT? 

fought that scrap through to a finish, and I 
saw you do it; and you licked the Boche at 
his own game. You didn't need those waiting, 
watching Frenchmen, but the fact that they 
were there, that they lay there all day, back- 
ing you up, was the thing that thrilled you 
that day and thrills you now as you think of 
it. And those Frenchmen were just as proud 
as you were over your victory. The officers 
sent communications saying so to your officers. 
Since that day you have had a new love, a 
new comradeship for the French. You have 
heard that word "Comrade" on the French 
soldier's lips everywhere since you came over, 
and now it is beginning to mean much to you. 
That is one of the finest things that is coming 
out of this war, for God's laws are shaping a 
new world brotherhood. 

Lesson the Third: A Great New Respect for 
Your Officers and for Yourselves. You have 
become men overnight, some of you who- have 
been down there in the trenches, for I have 
seen you. One lives a year in a month in this 
war; a month in a week; a week in a day; 

a day in an hour; an hour in a minute, and 

35 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

sometimes an eternity in a second. And so 
overnight you lads have become men. You 
are learning a new respect for yourselves as you 
conquer in this war; as you conquer your- 
selves; as you conquer temptations, with which 
France is full; as you conquer fear. That is 
a tremendous thing that God is bringing out of 
this war for you. 

You are learning to love and serve and re- 
spect each other. I picked a boy up in my 
truck down on the front lines a while ago. 
I was going down front myself with a load of 
provisions for our front-line hut. I said to 
the boy, "When do you have to get back to 
the trenches? Is there any special time?" 

He replied: "Not until seven o'clock, but 
if I get there a little earlier the other guy can 
get out a little quicker." 

You are learning to think of the other 
fellow. You know how long that last hour 
is in the trenches, waiting for relief. Yes, 
you are beginning to have more respect for 
each other. And that is not confined to en- 
listed men. You have more respect for your 
officers. 



WHAT IS COMING OUT OF IT? 

Down in the trenches one day there was 
a terrific scrap. Two of our Young Men's 
Christian Association secretaries were in the 
trenches when it began. They were sent back 
by the captain. They went through the com- 
munication trenches through the woods back 
toward the village. When they got to the 
edge of the woods they found two stretcher 
bearers with a wounded German, all done out. 
The stretcher bearers were going to leave the 
prisoner there. The secretaries said that they 
would help carry him. They all started, taking 
turns as they walked along the trench with 
backs bent. Then, midway in the field through 
which the communication trench ran they 
came to a place where the German shells had 
caved the trench in. They had a discussion 
as to what to do and decided to carry the 
prisoner out on the parapet. "The Germans 
won't fire on us when they see us carrying a 
wounded man above our heads," they agreed. 
But they had hardly gotten started when a 
terrific barrage of German shells fell around 
them. They dropped their wounded prisoner 
and ran. One Young Men's Christian Asso- 

37 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

ciation secretary was an old man, but he says 
that when he got his second wind he beat the 
stretcher bearers across the field. They re- 
ported to headquarters. The major in charge 
asked, "But where is your prisoner?'' 

"He's out there on the parapet, sir, where 
we dropped him." 

The major turned to these men and said 
something that ought to go down in history: 
"Well, he may only be a Boche, men, but we're 
Americans, and he'll have to be brought in 
if I go for him myself." 

So out the secretaries went again under that 
shell fire. They were an hour getting him, 
but at last they brought that wounded German 
to safety. When you hear your American 
officers talking like that a new respect wells 
in your heart for them. 

Then there was that funeral scene at the 
evacuation hospital at Sebastapol. Our secre- 
taries had had the detail of digging the five 
graves that morning. The first American pri- 
vate was buried and the military salute fired 
over his grave; then "taps." Then the second 
American private, with the military salute and 

38 



WHAT IS COMING OUT OF IT? 

taps. Then the third. Then a captain, with the 
military salute and taps. Then came the Hun 
boy. His grave was dug beside that of the 
American captain. The sergeant in charge of 
the firing squad seemed uncertain as to what 
to do about giving the Hun military honors. 
He looked at his officer chaplain and said, 
"Shall we fire a salute for the Hun, sir?" 

I shall never cease to feel proud of that 
chaplain's answer. He made it short, but he 
said something. He said: "Men, we are not 
fighting this poor boy. We are fighting the 
German nation and the military powers. This 
is just some German mother's boy. Yes, fire 
a salute over the Boche." 

The salute was fired and taps blown for the 

Boche boy, and I know that firing squad of 

American lads went away, as I did, with a 

new respect for their officers. 

And out of this war there is coming a new 

respect for yourselves, for your officers, and 

that, too, is a tremendously wonderful thing 

that God is doing. 

Finally, Out of This War There Is to Come 

in Your Hearts a New Respect for, and Under- 

39 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

standing of, the Christ Man. You are learning 
that Christ died on Calvary for the same 
things that you are fighting for: liberty, 
brotherhood in the world, the principle that 
all men are created equal, the inviolability of 
personality and the destruction of that em- 
pire which would enslave the whole world. 

You are seeing that Jesus the Christ Man 
had much in common with your experiences. 
Gethsemane was the trench of Christ's life; 
Calvary was "over the top." When he con- 
quered his fear, his natural human fear, his 
dread of pain and death, and faced Calvary, 
because he knew that that was the thing to 
do, he went "over the top." 

A boy down front talked in this way to me 

one day as we sat in a Young Men's Christian 

Association hut. He said: "Sir, I've been 

a-readin' this story of the garden. It seems 

to me, if I read it right, that this here Guy 

Christ" (I winced at his way of putting it, 

fellows, but his sincerity made me calm again), 

"he didn't want to go 'over the top.' He was 

a bit afraid of it, just like us, and just like 

the Tommies and all of 'em. They admit it. 

40 



WHAT IS COMING OUT OF IT? 

They are afraid, but they go anyhow. They 
hate it, but when the time comes and the 
whistle blows, over they go to a man, forgetting 
their fear." 

And, fellows, that lad was right. I've read 
a good many books and I've talked to a good 
many men — English, French, and Americans — ■ 
who have gone "over the top," from the Marne 
to Gallipoli; from Jerusalem to the Somme; 
from Verdun to the big drive, and I never 
.yet have met a man who wasn't big enough 
to admit that he was afraid when he knew 
that in a few minutes he was to go over. But 
the man who is afraid and who conquers fear, 
has won one of the greatest battles in war. 
Then the boy continued: 

"Yes, this Christ Man was a bit afraid, as 
I see it. He even went so far, as I read it, as 
to say, Tf it's just as good with you, let me 
out of it, Father,' or words that meant the 
same — I ain't quotin' them exactly, I know. 
Then suddenly he seemed to realize that it 
was orders from back of the lines; orders from 
a Great Commander back of the lines some- 
where who knew more about it all than he 

41 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

did; a Commander who had a bigger view of 
the battle than he did. Suddenly he seemed 
to realize that orders was orders, and he said: 
Tt's all right now. Let's go!' or as that Book 
puts it, 'Nevertheless, not my will, but thine 
be done' — and over he went!" 

Yes, men, the lad was right. He had fig- 
ured it all out. He had read that story of 
Gethsemane and Calvary. He had seen that 
Jesus Christ had about the same human fears 
of death and pain as you boys have. Some- 
how Christ seems more of a soldier's Christ 
than ever before when we understand that 
story. Somehow he seems more your Christ 
than anybody's else in all this world. Some- 
how he seems to have come just for you and 
just for these hard days. And down there 
in the trenches — no wonder they find him 
there. He has been there before. He was 
there in the garden. And when he went to 
Calvary's cross he went "over the top" for 
humanity. You too will do that, and some 
of you (for I am talking to some wounded 
men here, I see) have already done it. Now 
Christ will mean more to you than ever. He 

42 



WHAT IS COMING OUT OF IT? 

will be a closer Friend; he will be more precious. 
You will take him with you now, for he is 
strangely and silently and surely yours. 

Donald Hankey, that Oxford athlete, was 
not ashamed to pray to this Christ. Before 
the charge in which he lost his life while lead- 
ing his men, down there in the trench, he 
asked them to kneel with him in prayer. 
They arose and Hankey said: "Over the top! 
If wounded, 'Blighty'; if killed, the resurrec- 
tion !" 

Yes, out of this war there is coming into 
your lives a new understanding and a new 
love for your home folks, for your nation, and 
there is coming a new respect for and under- 
standing of yourselves, your comrades, your 
officers; a new world-wide brotherhood and a 
new understanding of and love for that Christ 
who is distinctly these days your Comrade and 
your Friend. 

No, God didn't make the war. That ques- 
tion is answered, but he is taking the black 
cloud of this war and he is turning it into a 
great unfolding rose of beauty and wonder- 
ment. 

43 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

My text? You are waiting for that, lads? 
Well, my text is the story of Christ in Geth- 
semane. Go home and read it before you 
sleep. You will know Christ better then. 



44 




"We lifted the 
stretcher with the 
colonel in it to the top 
of the parapet" 



CHAPTER II 

THE DOMINIE "DOWN THE LINE" 

The Soldier — His Attitude Toward 
The Chaplain 

One gets a little clearer insight into the 

attitude of the American soldier in France 

toward religious things, and into the supreme 

possibilities of his attitude toward religion and 

the church after the war, by knowing his 

attitude toward the "Padre," or the "Parson," 

or the "Doc," or "the Chaplain," or the "Sky 

Pilot," or the "Dominie," as the preacher is 

variously called by the boys. We have seen in 

45 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

the preceding chapter what his attitude toward 
a certain type of sermon is. Now we shall see 
what his attitude is toward the one outstand- 
ing representative of the church, the chaplain. 

The Senior G. H. Q. chaplain on the staff 
of General Pershing, Bishop Brent, says among 
other things: 

"The opportunity of the chaplain in the 
American Expeditionary Forces is unprece- 
dented in military history. The best manhood 
of America is his to guide, inspire, and mold. 
It has been a common complaint in parochial 
life that men do not form a prominent element 
in the average congregation. No such com- 
plaint can be made in the army. Again, our 
men are in such a temper of mind as to wel- 
come greedily the truth of God from the hearts 
of true men. They are at the most receptive 
moment of their lives. They are quick to de- 
tect and spurn unreality and sham. They 
are in search of and responsive to what is real. 

"The chaplain comes with two commissions 

— that of the church, which provides him with 

power from on high; that from the nation, 

which indicates his sphere of duty. He is 

46 



THE DOMINIE "DOWN THE LINE" 

simply a minister of God working in military 
conditions. He is always and everywhere the 
spiritual general of the army, and his insignia 
perpetually proclaims it." 

One who has read more than two hundred 
war books during the last three years tells 
me that he has yet to find one that "knocks" 
the "Dominie." On the other hand, he says, 
"I could fill an entire chapter with pages of 
genuine tributes to these men of God who 
'go about doing good' from the ports of entry 
out even into No Man's Land in France. From 
Donald Hankey to Private Peat, thoughtful 
soldiers have poured out their eloquent tributes 
to the 'Padre.' " 

Of course, it is always the question of the 
man himself rather than the office. This was 
true in war as it is always true in peace. It 
is especially true, however, in war because the 
littleness and the weakness of the man who 
is supposed to represent the church and the 
Christ come out in war as they will never 
do in peace. If he is a man through and 
through, he wins everlasting friendship from 
his men for himself and for his Christ. 

47 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

I can best illustrate this by telling the story 
of old Scotch Dominie Clifford. His story is 
but typical of hundreds of chaplains. Prac- 
tically the entire ministerial personnel of the 
Protestant Church in France enlisted and lived 
and died with their men. Innumerable stories 
of the courage and bravery of English and 
Canadian clergymen who had enlisted as chap- 
lains have come to us. I know of one chap- 
lain, the Rev. Olin Clarke Jones, a Methodist 
preacher, who so won the admiration of men 
and officers for his executive ability that he 
was urged to give up his chaplaincy and go 
into the war as a "line officer," which he did, 
afterward going through the St. Mihiel and 
Argonne battles. He was known by his men 
as a "line officer," but they came to him as 
their chaplain iust the same. 

I know of one Canadian minister who en- 
listed as a Y. M. C. A. secretary who went 
to France for six months. When he was six 
months on the task and his time to go home 
had come, the captain of the company came 
to his pup tent, one rainy Sunday morning, and 
called on him. The captain's visit came as a 

48 



THE DOMINIE "DOWN THE LINE" 

surprise to the preacher, for the captain had 
not heretofore seemed to be very friendly 
to him. 

"What's this I hear about your going back 
home soon?" the captain thundered at him. 

"Yes, that is my plan. My church only 
released me for six months, you know, captain." 

"I don't give a d how long your church 

released you for. We need you here. I can see 
a difference in the discipline, in the morale, 
and in the whole attitude of these boys since 
you came with us, and you let that church 
back in Toronto go — . They don't need you 
as much as my boys need you!" 

It was rough language, but it was sincere 
language, and the preacher knew it. He sent 
a cable back to his church. He didn't word 
it in exactly the language that the captain 
had adopted, but he did tell his people that 
he thought that as long as the war lasted he 
was needed more in France than he was at 
home. He went into the service as an army 
chaplain, and was killed six months later on 
the Somme. 

But perhaps of all the stories that I found 

49 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

in France the one of Dominie Clifford illus- 
trated more clearly all of the things that I 
want to show in this chapter: the way a chap- 
lain won out over the prejudice of a crowd of 
marines until they annexed him as one of their 
military outfit; the kind of a chaplain that 
wins and the spirit that wins, which, I take 
it, is the same spirit that will win for the 
preacher at home as well as in war. 

Dominie Clifford in the battle of Chateau- 
Thierry had become a hero in the eyes of the 
marines over night and he didn't know it. 

The news swept over Paris like wildfire. 
The enemy was not far from the great city, 
and every detail of the battle that was raging 
only a few miles away was eagerly devoured. 
Hundreds of French, English, and Americans 
invalided to Paris surrounded the bulletin 
boards. Every state document had been taken 
away from Paris. One conservative French 
paper which I read said: "Our armies are so 
close to Paris that there is no longer any 
room to maneuver. This is the most serious 
situation we have yet faced in the war." 

Every truck in Paris was numbered and every 

50 



THE DOMINIE "DOWN THE LINE" 

plan made for an evacuation if necessary. 
News had been pouring in to Paris of heroic 
stands that were being made by the Amer- 
ican troops, especially the marines. Men had 
been mentioned by name. War honors were 
imminent for many. But of all the stories that 
came out of his eventful week's righting that 
of Dominie Clifford's winning of the Croix 
du Guerre by dragging his wounded colonel 
through a stubble wheatfield, for four hundred 
yards to safety, crawling with shells bursting 
around him, with the necessity of using a gas 
mask most of the time, with rifle bullets whining 
so close that several went through his clothes 
and a piece of shrapnel into his shoulder, 
thrilled us most. 

I was told to see him and have an interview 
with him. I went to his hotel and asked if 
"Dr. Clifford" was there, and just at that 
minute he stepped into the lobby. It was the 
Hotel Pavilion. 

"Here I am," he said with a grin. 

And there he was; a little, gray-haired man 

about fifty-five years old /with a Scotch twinkle 

in his eyes and a weary look about his face. 

51 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

I learned later that the day he had rescued 
the colonel two bullets had gone through his 
cane while he was walking along a camouflaged 
road attending to his duties. Yet he did not 
think that this little matter of two bullets 
going through his cane was worth mentioning 
to me. I found that out later from a soldier. 

He blushed when I told him what I wanted. 
"Interview me? What for, my boy?" 

And the way he asked it made me feel that 
perhaps, after all, I had made a mistake in 
the man; that perhaps I had gotten the name 
wrong; for, to be frank, he didn't look much 
like a hero to me. And evidently he himself 
didn't think that he had done anything worth 
talking about. 

"Yes, I was sent here to interview you." 

"They must have made a mistake. I haven't 
done anything," he said with perfect sin- 
cerity. 

But just then a representative of the Asso- 
ciated Press came up to the desk and said to 
the clerk: "Is there a man registered here by 
the name of Clifford? I have been sent to get 

an interview from him." 

52 



THE DOMINIE "DOWN THE LINE" 

"There, old fellow. That settles it. We've 
got you cornered and you can't get out of it," 
I said to him. 

He still seemed confused about it all, but 
when I said, "Why, we want you to tell us 
how you dragged your colonel off the field to 
safety," he consented to have dinner with us. 

We had no sooner gotten seated than he 
started in on his boys, the marines. He had 
been with them on the front lines for six months. 
He used to know them back in the West 
Indies, where he was a missionary, and, in 
fact, had found one of them right down in 
his outfit near Verdun whom he had known in 
the West Indies. He wanted to talk about 
his boys, but it was a stevedore job to get 
him to talk about himself. He just naturally 
and simply and yet with great subtlety evaded 
that. 

"Why, those marines," he said, "they are 
just naturally the finest fighting men in the 
world. That boy from the West Indies — I 
must tell you about him." 

Then he went on to tell of about how ten 
years ago, one evening he was walking down 

53 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

the streets of a little town in the West Indies 
where he was a missionary. He had on white 
duck clothes. On the way to the post office 
he bumped into three drunken marines and 
just as he came up an officer sighted them 
and was about to arrest them. The good 
Scotch missionary knew that that would mean 
a severe punishment, so he said to the officer, 
"I will take care of these boys." So, with the 
boys hanging on to him, dirtying his white 
ducks, he took them to their boat and put 
them to bed. Then he kept in touch with 
them, especially with one of them. This fellow 
was one who needed him badly, for he was a 
hard drinker. 

The boy braced up while he was under the 
missionaries' care down in the islands, and then 
he left, and for ten years the good Doctor had 
not heard of him. Then came Verdun in June, 
1918. The Doctor, according to his own 
story, which he was more eager to tell than 
how he had dragged the colonel off, was stand- 
ing behind his canteen one evening when up 
staggered a marine. 

Between hiccoughs, with bleary eyes staring 

54 



THE DOMINIE "DOWN THE LINE" 

up at the good Doctor, he said, "Hello, oP 
fren'! Y' don't know me, do you?" 

The Doctor admitted that he didn't remem- 
ber him. 

"So thash way you forget yer ol' frens, 
ish it?" the drunken marine said, half humor- 
ously, but with real affection in his voice. 

Then he continued as the Doctor looked 
mystified, "Shay, don't you r 'member that guy 
you got to shign the pledge back in ol' Wes' 
Indies ten years ago?" 

Then the Doctor remembered, and once 
again began his patient effort to save the soul 
of a common marine in whom he saw something 
worth fighting for even in those perilous days 
when a man might be in eternity any hour, 
and in a month's time, under the good Doctor's 
eye, that marine had won two stripes and bid 
fair to win another. 

And it was this type of experiences that the 
good Scotch missionary preacher- Y. M. C. A. 
secretary wanted to talk about rather than his 
own heroism, in spite of our efforts to drag 
the story for which we had come out of him. 

"Then there was Van," the Doctor said. 

55 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

"Day before yesterday at Luzy I met Van. 
I have been trying to help him quit cigarettes 
for months, but the poor kid just couldn't 
do it. I come on him lying in the corner of 
a fence, wounded seriously. He wanted a 
cigarette. I knew it wouldn't hurt him, so 
I lit the first cigarette I've lit in forty years 
and put it in his mouth. I don't know as I 
had ought to have done it, but I just naturally 
couldn't go by and let that kid o' mine hunger 
for a cigarette while he was a waiting for the 
ambulance. Do you think I did right?" 

"It would have been a crime if you hadn't 
done it," I said to him. 

"Put her there, old man; I'm for a preacher 
guy that can buck up to an emergency like 
that, even if he doesn't believe in the weed," 
said the young, impulsive newspaper reporter, 
reaching his hand across the table with gen- 
uine admiration for the old preacher. 

"Van looked up," said the Doctor, slowly 

and with tears in his eyes, "Van looked up at 

me and said: 'Doc, I know how you hate 'em, 

and yet you are big enough to light a cigarette 

for me. God bless you, Doc, and if I ever 

56 



THE DOMINIE "DOWN THE LINE" 

get well and get my strength I'll quit 'em, 
so help me God!' ' 

"Do you think he will?" I asked, not know- 
ing the grief I was uncovering. 

"No, he never got well. I buried him the 
next day." 

Then the young, impulsive reporter broke 
in with "What's that verse that you guys 
preach about? It seems to me it applies to 
what you did for that kid, Doctor; begging 
your pardon for quoting it in this reference: 
Tnsomuch as ye have done it unto the least 
of one of these,' and then there's some- 
thing about 'giving a cup of cold water 
in my name,' isn't there? Well, all I got 
to say is that being just a common news- 
paper reporter, and not knowing much about 
the church, or the Bible, and all that, still 
I got to hand it to you; you were doing Chris- 
tian work then when you lit the fag for that 
dying kid." 

"Of course that wasn't all I did," the Doctor 
said. 

"What else did you do?" I asked him. 

"I prayed with him. The cigarette opened 

57 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

the way. Then I asked him to pray for him- 
self. He spit the cigarette out and prayed. 
I think he found comfort. He died that 
afternoon." 

Then we tried again tactfully to lead him 
back to his heroism, but he evaded that part 
and said, "I must tell you about the trick the 
boys played on me." 

"One afternoon when I was out they stole 
my coat and my cap and took off all of my 
Y. M. C. A. buttons and put marine buttons 
in their place. I knew it was against the rules 
to wear them, but when I came in I didn't 
notice it and went to the officers' mess with 
them on. The colonel calls me 'Padre,' the 
major calls me 'Chaplain,' and the boys call 
me 'Doc,' you know," he said, smiling. 

"Well, the colonel looked at me funny like 
and said, 'Well, Padre, I see you've joined the 
marines for sure now, and have the buttons 
and all right with you?' 

"I was embarrassed and said, 'I'll go home, 
sir, and take them off. I didn't know they 
were on.' " 

"Who put them on, Padre?" 



THE DOMINIE "DOWN THE LINE" 

"The boys, sir." 

"Well, if the boys put them on they want 
them on, so on they stay!" the colonel said 
to him, with military finality. 

Then he told us about the last communion 
service. "The boys themselves asked for it. 
They knew the big fight was on the next 
day, and they asked if we might not have a 
communion service. I went and got some of 
that 'Van Rubbish,' as I call it— the French 
call it Vin Rouge — and, it being the best we 
could get, we had our communion with it. 
I told the boys what we were going to do 
and said that any who did not want to par- 
take of the Lord's Supper could leave. Not a 
single soldier left. 

"I took note of them and nine Catholics 
partook, thirteen Methodists, three Christian 
Scientists, nine Baptists, three Lutherans, three 
Congregationalists, two Episcopalians, one He- 
brew, and twenty-three who did not profess 
any religion. Five of these took a definite 
stand for the Christ in that meeting. The 
next day most of them were dead." Then 

he was subdued for a few minutes, and we 

59 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

couldn't get him to talk. He was thinking 
of those dead boys of his. Then he reached into 
his pocket and pulled out an envelope, from 
which he took a bright five-dollar gold piece. 

I took it and waited for the story, for the 
moment forgetting even myself that the old 
fellow was still evading his own heroic deed. 

"The boy that gave me that I saw just 
before the big fight. I passed him as he went 
down under the camouflage into a communica- 
tion trench. He said, 'Doc, have you any 
cigarettes?' 

"I had tried to get him to stop smoking, 
but couldn't resist the desire to give him a 
whole package. It might be my last chance 
to serve him. I pitched him a whole package. 

" 'Thanks, Doc; you're a good scout.' Then 
he came back, handed me that five-dollar gold 
piece and said: 'Doc, take that. If anything 
happens to me, send it to mother.' ' 

"Did he get out all right?" I queried, anx- 
iously, for I knew that only a few of the boys 
who had taken that strategic village had 
gotten out. 

"I am sending the gold piece to his mother 

60 



THE DOMINIE "DOWN THE LINE" 

this afternoon, along with a letter telling her 
of his heroic death." 

"How did he die?" we both shot at him. 

"He died in a strange way. He had been 
in the thick of it all morning, right down in 
the front lines, where the shell fire, gas, and 
rifle bullets poured continuously and machine 
guns swept the parapets. Then there was 
an 'over the top* order. He happened to be 
near his major when they went over. Half 
way across a field his major was shot down 
and dropped in an open field wounded. For 
an hour the boy lay there between his major 
and the machine-gun fire, protecting the officer 
with his young body, unscathed. The major, 
appreciating his service, but knowing that he 
was bleeding to death, sent the boy back for 
stretcher bearers." 

"Why, the boy will get the medal for that," 
I said. 

"He would have, but he was killed on the 
way back," came the answer. "It was this way: 

"The lad made his way through a barrage 

back across the field, through the little village. 

Just as he was skirting the edge of the village 

61 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

he heard the whine of a shell. He jumped 
for a nearby dugout. He made it, but a frag- 
ment of the shell struck his cartridge belt and 
a dozen of his own bullets penetrated his body. 

"Yes, he would have gotten a decoration; 
the major would have seen to that, for he 
was rescued later, and almost the first thing 
he asked about was the welfare of the lad who 
had lain between him and the machine-gun 
fire, and when we told him what had happened 
to the lad he sat down and cried." 

"But what about your own story?" the 
reporter asked a bit impatiently, I thought. 

The old preacher paid no attention to him, 
but went on to tell us about an experience he 
had had in going into the trenches the night 
before he had dragged the colonel off. 

"It's no fun for an American boy to be on 

patrol duty down close to the lines," he said. 

"Last night I was there. I went down to 

say 'hello' to the boys. I was feeling my way 

along the sides of the communication trenches. 

It was pitch dark, and misty. Every sound 

cracked like a gun. Suddenly I heard a 'Halt, 

who goes there?' 

62 



THE DOMINIE "DOWN THE LINE" 

"I replied, 'Friend!' " Then the old Doctor 
chuckled. "That boy was so relieved to know 
that it was not a Boche and to recognize my 
voice that he whispered: 'O, come on, Doc. 
I'm glad it's you,' instead of making me ad- 
vance and give the countersign." 

The preacher seemed determined not to talk 
about his own bravery, and I could see that 
here was a type of man that the reporter had 
never been up against before, and he was 
fidgeting in his seat. We had long since 
finished dessert and he wanted the old man's 
story. These other things couldn't be put 
over the cable for a story. Dragging the 
wounded colonel off was the news story. That 
was worth a cable. That other stuff in his 
eyes wasn't big news. I was beginning to 
think, as the Doctor evidently believed, that, 
after all, he was giving us the real story; that 
of how he had gotten into the hearts of those 
marines, and had served them until they had 
taken him in turn into their hearts. 

"One Catholic boy took a definite stand 
for Christ in that communion service," the 
nonchalant Doctor said, jumping back a half 

63 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

an hour to a story we thought he had fin- 
ished. 

"He took a stand for Christ, and then came 
up and told me that he was a Catholic and that 
he wanted me to go with him to Father Ryan 
to hear him make his confession. I didn't 
want to go, but he insisted upon my going. 
I went, and a more horrible confession of sins 
I never expect to hear. But he was in dead 
earnest, and it was a good thing that he got it 
all off his soul, for he was dead the next day." 

Then the dear old modest fellow bowed his 
head in thought. The strain of the past week 
had told on him. He looked weary. I wanted 
to put my arms around his bent shoulders. 
I thought of my own father being here, down 
in the front line trenches, sleeping out in the 
fields, as the Doctor told us he had done for 
weeks, with only a helmet for a pillow. "They 
make right good pillows," he had said a min- 
ute before. I thought of my own father en- 
during those dangers and hardships at the age 
of fifty or fifty-five; sleeping out without 
taking his clothes off for twenty days; the 
Doctor had told us of that also, and had 

64 



THE DOMINIE "DOWN THE LINE" 

added with a chuckle, "Then I had to get 
rid of them, for the cooties had arranged for 
a convention there." I wanted to reach out 
and let him lean on me. I thought he would 
drop off to sleep, but he was only thinking of 
his marines, so many of whom had "gone 
west" in the week preceding our interview. 
The burden of their loss was heavy on his 
sympathetic soul. 

"But, Doctor, won't you please tell us about 
your own stunt, for I have to go in ten minutes." 

"Well, we still have more than enough time 
to tell about what little I have done, but I 
won't tell it if you don't promise me that you 
won't spread on the taffy." 

It was an expression I had heard my own 
Scotch mother use, and I knew all that he 
meant by it. 

"All right; you go on with the story." 

Then followed as simple a statement as a 
Scotch dominie (chary with anything, especially 
words) could tell: of how he and the news- 
paper reporter whom the press later eulo- 
gized for having gone over the top with the 

marines, were waiting in the major's tent. 

65 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

They were to go down front. The major went 
off with the reporter and told the Doctor to 
follow with his orderly, a young lieutenant. 
The major and the reporter had barely gotten 
out of sight when a runner came in with the 
news that the colonel was wounded seriously 
and was lying in an abandoned trench on the 
other side of the town, about four miles away 
at the far end of a wheatfield. 

The young lieutenant and the old "Y" 
secretary (whose colonel was the apple of his 
Scotch dominie's eye) started off for him. 
There were no stretcher-bearers in sight, but 
there was a stretcher. They carried that with 
them. Amid a constant hail of machine-gun 
bullets they went through the town. Nobody 
knew which house was occupied by Boches 
and which by Americans. Machine-gun bullets 
were flying every direction. They had to get 
through this village somehow to get to the wheat- 
field. Finally they reached the field. Then they 
had to crawl for four hundred yards on their 
stomachs along a low hedge across this field, 
in full view of the Germans, the field swept 
by rifle and machine-gun bullets, with now 

66 



THE DOMINIE "DOWN THE LINE" 

and then a shell falling perilously near. One 
fragment from a shell tore a hole in the old 
secretary's coat and shoulder as he crawled 
and tore the hedge to his left into bits. 

The young lieutenant kept yelling back, 
"Keep your head down, Doc!" 

The old Scotch missionary chuckled as he 
told us this, pointing down to his rather prom- 
inent waist: "I was keeping down as close 
as I could get to the ground. I never did real- 
ize what a bother a stomach was before. I 
got to wishing I had dieted all my life as we 
crawled along that hedge. As it was I was 
so close to the earth that I scratched my nose." 

Then we all laughed, and it was a good 

thing, for, as simply as that old man narrated 

his heroic story, it was the most intensely 

dramatic telling I have ever listened to. I 

was crawling with him myself along that 

hedge, pressing my body to the ground with 

him, hearing the bullets whistling through the 

hedge near me, hearing the lieutenant yell, 

"Keep your head down, Doc, or they'll get you!" 

After crawling four hundred yards in this 

manner they finally dropped into the aban- 

67 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

doned trench, and there the colonel was lying. 
His first question was, "I wonder how Bare is?" 
referring to his major. Then he handed over 
his maps to the young lieutenant and fainted. 

For two hours the three of them lay in that 
low, abandoned trench waiting for the fire 
to die down enough to let them crawl back 
again. As they lay there two gas shells fell 
near and they had to don gas helmets. 

At this point the old Preacher interrupted 
his own story, much to the disgust of the 
newspaper ' reporter, to tell about how one 
evening he had been preaching to the marines 
when a "gas alert" sounded. The boys quickly 
donned their masks, and then one boy yelled 
out, "You know, you can still keep on talking 
with the French mask, but you have to breathe 
through your mouth with the English mask, 
and you can't talk." We both knew this, 
for we had had some uncomfortable expe- 
riences breathing through English masks our- 
selves, but it was interesting to hear the old 
man chuckle as he told about that evening 
when the boys wanted him to "put on a French 

mask and go right on talking." 

68 



THE DOMINIE "DOWN THE LINE" 

Finally we got him back to his story. 

"The colonel had a hard time getting his 
mask on, so I tried to help him, but he wouldn't 
let me move. The trench was so small that 
when I moved, my body was exposed. I felt 
so sorry seeing him try to put that mask on 
with his left shoulder shot through, that I 
rolled over and helped him. That's where I 
twisted my back, and why they had to send 
me to the hospital." He added these last 
words in disgust that he had been invalided 
for such a slight pretext. It was not accord- 
ing to his wishes; we could see that in his 
whole attitude. Then he went on with his 
story: 

"After awhile we decided to make a try 

for it. The machine guns were still sweeping 

the field and shells were falling now and then. 

But we got the colonel on the stretcher. The 

lieutenant went in front and I behind. We 

lifted the stretcher with the colonel in it to 

the top of the parapet. Then we shoved it 

out as far as we could in front of us. Then 

we pulled and pushed and lifted and crawled 

and rolled over and over, and kept our bodies 

69 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

close to the ground, and scraped and edged 
and squirmed and grunted and finally we got 
the colonel across that stubbled wheatfield. 
It took us an hour and a half to get across 
that field. Then we had the village to go 
through, but about dark we got him to the 
woods, where it was comparatively safe. That's 
all there was to it. Not much of a story. 
Hardly worth telling. Others would have done 
the same and are doing it every day up there. 
Better men than this old missionary are risk- 
ing and giving their lives every day without 
a thought of being a hero. I don't want you 
to make a lot of what I did. Please don't! 
I feel so humble in the face of what the boys 
are doing. Bless them every one! I often 
feel like applying to them the sentiment of 
Kipling's last line of 'Gunga Din' when I think 
of my boys, even some of them who smoke 
and drink, and whom I scold often." 

"We all feel that way," I added, for it is 
one of my deepest convictions, after having 
been over there half a year, that those of us 
who serve as secretaries have nothing but 

the deepest of reverence and humility in the 

70 



THE DOMINIE "DOWN THE LINE" 

face of the heroism and sacrifice and nobility 
of the boys in the trenches. Not one of us who 
has seen them in the front lines who would 
not get down in humility and wash their feet. 
I heard one "Y" secretary say, using the 
term "dog" which the boys themselves use to 
designate the orderly who acts as valet to 
an officer, "Whenever any of that gang o' 
'doughboys' wants a 'dog,' I'm right here to 
say that he can call on me." 

And so Dominie Clifford felt about his boys. 
One feels in this spirit of service to the lads, 
something of that thing which caused Jesus 
to get down on his knees to wash the feet of 
his disciples. This spirit cannot be imitated. 
It cannot be assumed. It cannot be put on 
and off as a garment. It must be a part of 
the fiber of the human soul. One saw much 
of it in France among the war workers; the 
willingness to be a "dog" for a boy. 

There are those who will speak of the dig- 
nity of the church and the ministry. There 
are those who will scorn the idea of the church 
stooping or changing its ways for the boy. 

Indeed, I have heard these little ministers of 

71 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

God talk already. I have heard them say, "But 
why should the church change? Why shouldn't 
the boys change? Why should the church 
change its ways to reach three million boys?" 

I say in answer to that, that the man who 
feels that way will be a stumbling-block not 
only in the way of Christ trying to reach the 
boy, but he will be a stumbling-block in the 
way of the boy trying to reach the Christ. 
I say in answer to that, that the minister of 
the church who talks like that has forgotten 
the very genius of the Master, whose way 
was to "Go out into the highways and byways 
and compel them to come in"; a willingness 
to go out after them, to search for them, to 
humble oneself to win them to himself. 

In reconstruction work I believe that the 
minister of God who has the attitude toward 
the boys that Dominie Clifford had in France 
will win them a thousand times quicker than 
the minister who is so jealous of the dignity 
of the church that he sacrifices his chance of 
winning the boy. This must also apply to 
every man, young or old, capitalist or laborer 

in civilian life. 

72 



THE DOMINIE "DOWN THE LINE" 

Is it any wonder that a man like dear Dr. 
Clifford would win the hearts of men any- 
where, at home or at war? Humility, John 
Ruskin says, is "the first test of a truly great 
man." And real humility is self-sacrifice, the 
willingness to serve even unto death; the 
willingness to forget prejudices in the face of 
emergencies, remembering that men are more 
valuable than creeds or dogmas. 

The boys "over there" took to such a chap- 
lain or such a secretary with a great, hungry 
eagerness and welcomed him into their rough 
comradeship, even to the buttons on his uni- 
form. Perhaps the picture of this man of 
God will help us to understand the type of 
approach that will win the boys as they come 
home to us. 



73 




"Another minute and my 
,^ _J^ boys would be going over" 

CHAPTER III 

THE MORNING WATCH 

The Soldier — His Attitude Toward 
Prayer 

The next three chapters of this book are 
devoted to the attitude of the soldier toward 
prayer, because one feels that this is vital to 
an understanding of the true religious life of 
the soldier in France; and, in turn, it is neces- 
sary to a complete understanding of the boy 
who is so rapidly coming back to us. 

The church at home must realize that the 
men are not indifferent, are not scornful, are 

74 



THE MORNING WATCH 

not averse, are not unbelievers in prayer. 
Such a realization will help the church to 
know that the fault is with ourselves if the 
men who are now in France come home only 
to find themselves ill at ease in our houses 
of worship. What is to come out of this atti- 
tude of the men toward prayer will depend 
upon what we do to keep fresh this fervent, 
simple, natural and real belief in intercession. 
God pity us if we fail! 

We have an expression relating to prayer at 
home that has always had about it an atmos- 
phere of sacredness, and that expression is the 
heading of this chapter, "The Morning Watch." 
Most of us who have used the expression 
have not really known what it means. There 
are those of us in civil life who seldom see the 
sun rise, but the soldier hears the call of the 
reveille usually before daylight, and no man, 
morning after morning, can see the sun rise 
out of the ocean or from the hills without 
somehow feeling nearer to the God of all 
nature. And so, whether or no, the soldiers 
in the American army kept the Morning 
Watch. True enough, they threatened "to kill 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

the bugler" who called them to this Morning 
Watch, and one of their favorite songs carries 
this dire suggestion, but that is the way of 
the soldier. 

And not only did he keep a Morning Watch 
physically, but he kept it in his prayer life 
also, both figuratively and literally. I have 
had hundreds of boys, in their finer moments, 
confess to the fact that morning and evening 
was their prayer time; and it was hard to tell 
which was the favorite hour. 

It was the four-to-eight lookout. Seamen 
call it the "Morning Watch." We had climbed 
sixty -five feet in the darkness into the crow's 
nest, with the great transport swinging in the 
waves and on its zigzag course, and the wind 
blowing such a terrific gale that I thought I 
would fall to the deck every time the ship 
swung. For a pure landlubber the feat of 
climbing a mast is no easy before-breakfast 
exercise. When I started up that pole, it looked 
a good mile and a half to the top. When I 
got half-way up, the rungs took a dizzy no- 
tion to travel clear around the mast. As 

one of my fellow sufferers who was following 

76 



THE MORNING WATCH 

me up the mast said, "I would have gone 
back, but that would have been doing the 
impossible twice." But at last, by sheer will 
power, we reached the top, crowded through 
the little hole in the floor of the crow's nest, 
and took the next half hour of the four-hour 
watch recovering from the climb. The Ledge 
Trail at Yosemite looks easy compared with 
that climb into the crow's nest. But, like the 
Ledge Trail, this climb was well worth the 
effort when you reached the top. 

Morning was breaking, and it was to be an 
eventful morning, we soon found. A crimson 
splash along the eastern sky told us that it 
was to be a beautiful morning at least. This 
crimson promise was soon fulfilled when the 
great sun itself shot its way up out of the 
ocean as though it had been fired from a big 
gun over there somewhere on the German 
lines, away from which we were steaming as 
fast as one of Uncle Sam's big transports could 
plow the waves. 

Then suddenly that world-old biblical phrase, 
"The morning watch," came flashing into my 
mind, and for the first time I knew the mean- 

77 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

ing of it all. I had conducted Morning Watch 
hours in my church work many times, but I 
never knew the wonder, the beauty, the mean- 
ing of that sweet hour just before, during, and 
following the dawning of a new day as I learned 
it from the crow's nest while sailing out of 
the east into the west, homeward bound from 
France. 

Then suddenly, floating in the water, we 
saw several life preservers. 

"Report them to the bridge," shouted the 
head watch. 

"Number One," I called through the tele- 
phone. 

"Number One?" was the response. 

"Two life preservers floating on the port 
side of the ship about fifty feet away." 

"O. K., Number One," was the report from 
the bridge. 

Then in rapid succession we had to report 
ten, fifteen, twenty boxes floating in the water. 

"There's a bale of cotton floating by," 
said the man on the "Morning Watch" with me. 

"And there's another," I cried, "on the 
starboard side." 

78 



THE MORNING WATCH 

"Number One, two bales of cotton floating, 
one on the port and one on the starboard side 
of the ship, about one hundred yards distant," 
I reported. 

"O. K, Number One." 

And so it went for four hours of that beau- 
tiful morning. Later, when we had climbed 
down from our lofty perch, we learned that 
we had been reporting the debris of a torpedoed 
French merchant vessel, which had been sunk 
the night before with all on board. 

Then suddenly off in the distance we saw 
a strange ship. It looked neither like a battle- 
ship nor like a merchant vessel, but somewhat 
like both. We watched it for several seconds, 
and then reported it to the bridge as looking 
suspiciously like a cruiser type of submarine. 
The bridge confirmed our surmises and ordered 
the big guns both fore and aft trained on it. 
But evidently the German U-boat had seen 
us about the time that we had sighted her, 
for she submerged before the eager gunmen 
had the chance to adjust the heavy shells and 
pull the levers of the big guns. 

We reported sighting the cruiser submarine 

79 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

to the ships within reach of our wireless, and 
during the next three days received reports 
from several ships that they too had sighted the 
^'cruiser U-boat" on her way back to Germany. 

The Morning Watch hour was significant in 
the great war, for it was at that hour that 
"over the top" signals came frequently. It 
was at this hour that more men passed "over 
the top" on their way "west" than at any 
other hour of the day or night, and many are 
the lads who have "gone west" during the 
Morning Watch along the edge of No Man's 
Land. 

The word had passed through the regiment. 
To-morrow at "zero" the whole regiment 
would "go over." 

It was the first time for most of the Amer- 
ican boys, and few of those who crawled into 
their dugouts slept that night. "Zero" was 
at dawn the next morning. They were to go 
over under cover of the gray, foggy dawn and 
surprise the Boche. There was to be no artil- 
lery preparation. 

The kid himself told me the story three 

days later as we sat in a hut: 

80 



THE MORNING WATCH 

"I was always a timid kid, even at home. 
Any kid in town could lick me. I just naturally 
didn't seem cut out for fighting, and I always 
believed that I had a yellow streak in me. 

"You know, sir, that's the thing us guys 
are most afraid of. We're not afraid to die, 
and we're not afraid of the Hun, but we're 
afraid of fear. We're afraid that when the 
time comes we'll not have the nerve. 

"I told everybody that I was afraid. I 
thought that it might just as well be known, 
for I knew that when the time came to 'go 
over' I'd just naturally drop in my tracks. I 
knew that my legs would tremble so that I 
couldn't lift them, much less climb up the 
step that I had shoveled out and march out 
across No Man's Land, as we had been told 
to do, 'at a leisurely pace.' " 

"Why, boy, they're all afraid," I told him. 
Then, for his comfort, I told him the story 
that I had heard in Paris: 

A crowd of officers were sitting in the officers' 
club talking among themselves. A young 
lieutenant stood up, paced the floor dramat- 
ically, and said to the crowd: "I'm perfectly 

81 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

willing to admit that there's one thing that 
I'm afraid of. There's one thing that 'gets 
my goat,' and gets it good and proper." 

"What's that?" the others asked him. 

"Why, these Gothas. They come over in 
the night and they come over in the day, and 
you never know when or where they're going 
to drop their bombs. If you had a fighting 
chance — if you could dodge them — I wouldn't be 
afraid. Yes, there's one thing that I'm afraid of." 

Then a gray-haired old war horse, a major 
in the regular army, arose. Everybody knew 
him. He had served through the entire Span- 
ish-American War. He had seen some stub- 
born bush fighting in the Philippines. He had 
been on the border for a year. He spoke 
quietly and sincerely: 

"Well, men, I've got just one thing to say 
in answer to the lieutenant, and that is that 
there are just about five hundred things in 
this war that I'm afraid of, and afraid good 
and proper." 

"Gee, that's comforting!" the boy said to 
me as we sat talking. "I thought I was the 
only guy in our 'outfit' that was afraid." 

82 



THE MORNING WATCH 

Then he went on with his story. 

"It was at dawn that we were to go over. 
I was afraid that I would be afraid. Every- 
body in my company knew it. My officers 
knew it. They said it was because I am so 
young. I'm only seventeen, sir. God, how 
I prayed!" 

"So you prayed, did you, lad?" I asked. 

"Yes, I prayed as we stood there in the 
trenches waiting for the whistle. I had on 
my luminous watch. It was still dark, and 
'zero' was four. It was ten minutes to four 
by the watch. In some ways it looked like a 
century to me, those ten minutes, and in other 
ways the seconds seemed to shoot past like the 
German machine-gun bullets do — so fast you 
can't see them. 

"Yes, I prayed this prayer: God, make 
me brave! Don't let me be afraid! Don't let 
me be afraid! I'd rather die than be afraid, 
God! I'd rather die than be afraid!' 

"Then I looked at my watch again. We 

just had five minutes to wait and the whistle 

would go. I think I got to be fifty years old 

in those five minutes. I looked out across 

83 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

No Man's Land and I imagined that I could 
see myself hanging to the wires out there, 
dead. I knew just how I would look. I saw 
a man hanging to a telegraph wire one day at 
home. He had got hold of a live wire, and 
there he hung, like a dead rabbit, on the wire. 
I knew I would look like that man. 

"Then I prayed again there in the dawn, 
'O God, don't let me be afraid!' 

"Then the old 'top sergeant' answered my 
prayer for God. I guess, sir, that that's a way 
God has of doing, isn't it? Getting human 
beings to answer prayers for him, doesn't he?" 

"I'm sure that he does," I responded. 

"Well, he did that time, anyhow. I looked 
at my watch. We had just two minutes. 
Then I began to shake all over. I was sure 
that everybody in the company could see my 
knees shakin'. 

"Just then the old 'top' comes along, slaps 
me on the back, and says: 'Go to it, kid, old 
boy! You've got the goods! Buck up! You 
can do it!' 

"And when that whistle blew all sense of 
fear left me, and over I went with the rest of 

84 



THE MORNING WATCH 

them. My knees quit trembling, and I was 
so crazy to get up over that parapet that I 
didn't even use the step. I just jumped." 

Then he stopped and blushed becomingly. 
I knew what he was coming to now, for that 
was the very thing that I had hunted him out 
to hear. "Maybe you saw it in the paper, 
sir — about — that big six-foot Boche I brought 
in. Honest, I don't know where I got him. 
All I can remember is that old 'top' slapping 
me on the back, and then the whistle blowing 
and then going over, and then the next thing 
I knew I had a big, six-foot Boche in front of 
me, and I was marching him in to divisional 
headquarters. The boys kidded me a lot and 
wanted to know where I'd found him, and if 
he'd captured me, and a lot of that stuff; but 
I got him, all right." 

"Yes, you got him, boy, and that was a 
mighty fine job too." 

"Yes, that was fine, but that isn't what I'm 
happiest about." 

"What are you happiest about?" 

"I'm happiest because it turned out that I 
wasn't afraid. I owe that to the old 'top.' 

85 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

Good old 'top'! I guess God must have heard 
my prayers all right and sent the old 'top' 
to answer them." 

Morning Watch experiences are varied in 
war times, as the above story indicates. 

There was another Morning Watch hour. It 
was before one of the big battles on the western 
front. The old chaplain had got up with his 
boys, for he knew that they were to go over 
at dawning. It was a misty morning. He 
would have given all that he had to have gone 
with them, he loved them so. He said to me 
as he told me his story: "It didn't just seem 
right for my boys to be going over and me 
not with them. But those were my orders; 
to stay back and help guide the 'walking 
wounded' in, and to help in the dressing sta- 
tion when it was all over, so there I had to 
stick. 

"But as the boys were silently filing into 
the front-line trenches I had the pleasure of 
taking every boy by the hand as he ducked 
under the camouflage at the edge of the road 
and went into the communication trench that 
led to the front. They were to go over that 

86 



THE MORNING WATCH 

morning without artillery support. The plan 
was to surprise the Boche. Up to that time 
we had always prepared the way for going 
over with a heavy artillery curtain. I knew 
just when they were to go over, so I walked 
up to a little hill. This hill commanded a 
good view of the lines. I climbed up into a 
tree where there was an observation post. 
I kept an eye on my watch. The time was 
near. Another minute and my boys would be 
going over, some of them 'going west.' 

"The thought broke my heart. Then up 
there in that tree I held a little Morning 
Watch service for them. I watched them go 
over. I couldn't distinguish their forms for 
the fog in the valley, but I said, 'Right down 
there, God — there in the fog — my boys and 
your boys are "going over the top." Take 
care of them, God. Go with them. Bless 
them! Keep them! And if they have to die, 
take them to thine arms of love, for Jesus' 
sake. Amen !' 

"That was the strangest Morning Watch I 
ever kept. At home I make it a habit to keep 
the Morning Watch every day, but somehow 

87 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

God seemed nearer to me up there in that 
tree in the observation post than he ever 
seemed back in my study or in my home. 
And never did I pray with more intense ear- 
nestness than I did at that hour." 

And so it is, fathers and mothers, that the 
chaplains, the secretaries, and even many 
officers, have kept guard over your boys; and 
so it is that men who love them, even over 
there in the cold, hard business of war, some 
spiritually visioned men, have not forgotten the 
Morning Watch. And always hovering back in 
the shadow was the Father "keeping watch 
above his own." 

And so it is seen that our boys in France 
have not been ashamed to keep the Morning 
Watch. Indeed, that was a sacred hour to 
them in more ways than one. Often at that 
hour they were looking into the face of eter- 
nity. Men pray in a simple, natural and yet 
impassioned earnestness at such times. God 
hears. They know that. Face to face with 
death has taught them that. 

When they come back, as they are now do- 
ing, will they find a naturalness in prayer in 

88 



THE MORNING WATCH 

the pulpit, in the pews, in the prayer rooms, 
in the life of the church? Will they find this 
simplicity in prayer, this confidence in prayer, 
this burning belief that God hears and answers 
prayer; that He is ever near? that He sustains 
and gives courage to a man meeting death so 
that he may die without fear in his soul? 



S9 



"And grant me grace through 
the fleeting hours to be A 
MAN — and unashamed" 




CHAPTER IV 
WHEN A MAN'S ALONE" 



The Soldier — What He Prayed 

I believe that the attitude of the American 
soldier in France toward every phase of prayer 
is vital to an understanding of this same 
soldier as he returns from France. If he be- 
lieved in prayer in France, he ought to be- 
lieve in it at home; and I lay down the chal- 
lenge to myself and to the church that we 
must keep alive this simple "talking to God" 
that the soldier has either learned in France 

for the first time, or that has been brought 

90 



"WHEN A MANS ALONE" 

forth, from his innermost heart during these 
stressful days. In any case it is there. Nothing 
can show this attitude toward prayer any 
better than what he prayed. Most of the 
prayers which are quoted in this chapter are 
taken from a beautiful little booklet issued by 
the Y. M. C. A. under the direction of Dr. 
Robert Freeman, pastor of the First Pres- 
byterian Church of Pasadena, California, who 
was the Pioneer Religious Work director of the 
Y. M. C. A. in France. More than five hundred 
thousand of these were issued and two months 
after they were printed it was impossible to 
get a copy in France. The boys eagerly grabbed 
them up. 

I have seen them posted on hut walls, 
pinned to tent flaps, tacked up in a cook- 
house in a Negro camp, pasted in Bibles, and 
song books and in pocket Testaments next to 
the pictures of mothers, wives, sisters, and 
sweethearts. I have seen them in hotel rooms, 
from Bordeaux to Paris, from Brest to Verdun. 
In some wonderful fashion these prayers struck 
the right chord in the lyric hearts of our great 

crusaders, and they treasured these expressions 

91 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

for their great, sacred moments. Can such 
taste in literature, can such delight in prayer- 
ful, religious expression mean anything but 
gigantic possibilities for the church, now that 
the war is over, if we understand and believe? 

The boy went thronging into a camp in 
America, with thousands of others as yet in 
civilian clothes. He was not even a "rookie." 
But he was not alone in this respect, for there 
were hundreds on the same train with him 
and none of them had uniforms. They were 
a joking, laughing crowd starting out on the 
first lap of "The Great Adventure." 

Boys may live in a great cantonment, train- 
ing for months, and an individual is so much 
a part of the great throng that he never had 
a minute to himself. In fact, he hungered to 
get away from the everlasting, constant pres- 
ence of the crowd of men. 

Men went marching down the streets of Amer- 
ica in platoons, in companies, in regiments, in 
whole divisions, and they looked so much alike 
that only the eye of love can pick out an 
individual as they marched by. Men went on 
board the great transports in masses; sometimes 

92 



"WHEN A MAN'S ALONE" 

as many as ten thousand to a ship. But when 
the submarine struck, each man died alone. 

We who have seen the American soldier 
in France have seen him in masses. As he 
marched into the trench he seldom marched 
alone. He might not at night even be able 
to see the man ahead of him, but he was con- 
scious of the presence of men of his own na- 
tion all about him, within touching distance. 
Even in midnight darkness, down in the 
trenches, he knew that off there to his left 
and to his right there was another American 
soldier keeping watch through the long night 
hours. But when the order came to go "over 
the top" each man went alone in his own heart; 
alone in his own courage, alone in his own 
bigness or littleness; and when death came, 
out there in No Man's Land each man died 
alone. 

When a group of aviators went up to patrol 

and met another group of enemy planes they 

fought in groups. Through given signals 

men may fight even in the air in formation 

and have a feeling of union, but when the 

deadly bullet finds its way home the aviator 

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STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

starts spinning earthward; and though there 
may be a thousand eyes turned on him from 
the earth, he dies alone. 

Though whole divisions and army corps; 
indeed, entire armies stretching along a battle 
front for fifty miles may go into a given great 
drive, as was the case in the line stretching 
from Noyon to Rheims, but when it came 
time for a man to die, in the corner of a French 
field, or in a trench, each man died alone. 

Night after night, while driving along the 
lines I have seen sentinels standing at the 
crossroads, or deep in the woods, or on little 
knolls, or in little boxes built to protect them 
from the rain and cold, or standing watch over 
an ammunition dump along a lonely field at 
two in the morning — each man alone. 

A man may be sleeping in a billet in an old 
stable with hundreds of his comrades lying 
about him, and a sense of security comes over 
him as he hears their breathing and sees their 
forms on every hand, but when the great shell 
comes tearing through the stone walls of that 
billet on its death-dealing mission, each man 
died alone. 

94 



"WHEN A MAN'S ALONE" 

When the seaplane went out on its patrol 
over the waters of the Bay of Biscay it carried 
three men, the pilot, the mechanic, and the 
observer. There was a sense of security in 
the fact that three were there. I know this 
because I have been on such a trip, but when 
suddenly something goes wrong with the en- 
gine; when the ship falls into the ocean fifty 
miles from shore, begins to sink, and forty- 
eight hours have passed and it looks as though 
there were no hope, and death faces those 
three lads, the fact suddenly comes home to 
them that they do not face death as a trio 
but each man faces it alone. The boys of the 
army have learned that when they "go west" 
they go alone. Not even the best "pal" can 
go with them. 

Then there were lonely night watches, when, 
even though surrounded by a hundred friends, 
a man fights out his own sorrows, his own 
loneliness, his own heartache — alone. 

It was because wise men knew this, wise 
men who had love in their hearts and who 
knew that there is just one Being and that 
Being is God who can go with a man into 

95 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

these "Alone" places, that the Y. M. C. A., 
through its great-hearted religious director, got 
out a little pamphlet, full of prayers for just 
such emergencies that came to the lad in 
the army. 

One night in a Paris hotel an American lad 
had fought a great battle for purity. It was 
the first time that he had ever been in a large 
city, and duty had sent him there. There 
had been a tremendous temptation the night 
before. It had come to him out on the Boule- 
vard. He had not as yet conquered, although 
he had won the first skirmish. But she was 
still out there in the darkness, waiting for 
him. He knew that, just as she was there 
waiting for any American lad. To him she 
would speak softly the few American phrases 
that she had learned, and the very childish- 
ness with which she spoke them made them 
seem harmless. 

"Bon Americaine!" 

"Mon Cherie Americaine." 

"Have a kiss for me, my Americaine?" 

"Come wiz me, Americaine." 

Then he saw on the wall of his hotel room 

96 



"WHEN A MAN'S ALONE" 

a neatly printed card, with a red triangle at 
its top. The red attracted his attention and 
he walked over to the wall above his bed and 
read the "Prayer for Morning" which Dr. 
Freeman had written for him: 

"Strong Son of God; 
I dare not go into this day without asking Thy 

blessing. 
The memory of other days spent without Thee is 

too vividly before me, 
Days when I have been weak and ignoble, 
Days when I have lived only to please myself, 
Caring neither for right, nor honor, nor the high 

welfare of others, 
In the sanity of the early morning, I humbly come 

to Thee, 
Who alone canst make me strong, 
And pledge myself to seek to do Thy Will, 
I, who would wage war to make a good world, 
Want to win the first battle in my own life. 
Make me then victor for to-day, over the sins 

which so easily beset me, 
And grant me grace through the fleeting hours to be 
A Man — and unashamed. Amen." 

And somehow when he had read that prayer 
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STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

from the card entitled "When a Man's Alone" 
the thing outside seemed a little thing and not 
at all beautiful and high and holy; and he 
was strong again and went to his bed clean 
of soul and clean of body, with the song of a 
great victory ringing in his heart. 

The evening prayer too, in this little folder 
was especially beautiful when you get the 
picture of the lad up front in the trenches. 
The evening shadows are falling and with the 
falling of night the real work of war begins. 
The restless Germans, almost before the sun- 
light has disappeared, have started their star 
shells, and these are beginning to light up 
No Man's Land as our boys peer out anxiously 
across this desolate stretch of death and 
desolation with the barbed wires massed in 
the dim shadows. Every night brought its 
uncertainties. There were raids to be carried 
out and certain boys were designated for this 
raiding party. There was always patrol work 
to do. There may be a German attack. Each 
night comes on apace, many of them glori- 
ously beautiful nights, some of them full 
moonlight nights; some of them ushered in 

98 



"WHEN A MAN'S ALONE" 

with mist and rain; but all of them full of the 
unknown, full of possibilities of death; and 
each boy knew that as each night fell he might 
never see another morning break. He reached 
into his pocket, pulled out "When a Man is 
Alone" and found that Dr. Freeman has thought 
of this hour for him. The lonely sentinel on 
his lonesome watch found that he too had 
been thought of; and each in his own place, 
read "The Prayer at Night": 

"Lord of my life, the shadows fall; 

And, in the shadows, what surprises lurk 

I cannot tell; 

What blaze of death shall through the night en- 
circle me, 

What subtle foe steal o'er the land-unclaimed, 

What pain, or more, awaits for us who tensely 
watch, 

All this I may not know. But still I hold 

God's in His heaven; aye, nearer to me than 
heaven, 

Thou, Christ, art here, here by my side, here in my 
heart; 

No man need face the shadows all alone. 

Give ear then to my prayer; 
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STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

Forgive my sins that rise in accusation now; 

And let that sweet forgiveness melt my heart 

In tender thoughts toward one-time friends across 

the sea. 
Send me Thy peace to keep me, come what will, 
And mark my vow made in the silences with 

Thee— 
Whatever years now lie ahead for me, 
I live for God. Amen." 

And what boy has not felt his heart melt 
as he has read, somewhere in a hotel room, or 
in a billet lying in mid-afternoon at rest from 
the night's work, or down in the trenches, 
that beautifully sweet "Prayer For the Folks 
at Home"? How magically the author had 
caught the universal hunger of the men! 

One boy said to me as we read that prayer 
together with tear- wet eyes: "We wouldn't 
be consistent fighters if we didn't think enough 
of the very homes and the very country for 
which we are fighting to get homesick for it. 
It doesn't make the American army any less 
a fighting army that it gets homesick. That 
kind of army will fight to the death just be- 
cause it is big enough to have such a love for 

100 



"WHEN A MAN'S ALONE" 

its home that it hungers for it." So Dr. Free- 
man caught and put into words the heart 
throb of all in his prayer for the folks back 
home, and we wept as we read it over, and 
nothing that we read or thought on so stirred 
our souls to the real spirit of prayer like these 
words, wherein he had voiced for us all that 
we had felt and could not say as we wished 
to say it: 

"Father above, and Best Friend of us all, 
Remember in Thy tender mercy 
The hearts that beat for me. 
I thank Thee for their prayers; 
But more; I thank Thee for the love that prompts 

their prayers; 
The love that makes them fancy me as of heroic 

mold. 
They are but human souls, those parents, kinsmen, 

friends, 
And that one woman Thou didst send to teach me 

love indeed, 
Whose kindly hearts will dread each coming day, 
And dream of danger through the night, 
Send them Thy peace, Lord. 

Bid them to know their cries are not in vain. 

101 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

Suffer no crushing circumstances to lay them low. 
Let Thy best gifts be theirs, health and their daily 

bread. 
The love of friend and neighbor, 
The joy that follows work well done, 
And the calm confidence that, though I am far 

away, 
I will not fail their hope, or bruise their pride. 
Gather us all under Thy wings; 
And in the night watches set our spirits free 
To meet where sea nor land can intervene; 
Until at length we win 'Back Home,' 
Or in Thy mercy meet within Our Father's house. 

Amen." 

I had occasion to say once on Mother's Day 
to a crowd of officers and men who were gath- 
ered in a banquet: "Imagine, men, if you 
can, the sneers that are passing over the faces 
of the Kaiser and his staff as he knows that 
in this day the American army is stopping in 
the midst of war to remember mother. They 
must surely be laughing in derision at such 
a thing, for the tender things do not come 
within the scope of the German military mind. 
It cannot grasp the fact that the man who can 

102 



"WHEN A MAN'S ALONE" 

stop in the midst of battle to remember mother; 
to be tender, to pray, to be kindly, and humane, 
will, in the end, make the warrior that fights 
until death for the very things that he stops 
to worship and to love." 

No we did not forget mother, and Dr. 
Freeman did not forget her when he wrote 
and dreamed and wept and sobbed out this 
great prayer for the sometime inarticulate 
mother to pray when alone: 

"Good God, who, through my life has been my 
stay, 
By whose ordaining joy and sorrow sought me out, 
Whose chiefest earthly gift to me has been my son, 
I turn to Thee in this, my anguish hour. 
No longer may I guide his steps, 
No longer does he come at eventide 
To give in his pure eyes the mirror of his soul. 
My baby gone; gone is my little lad; 
And now a man stands in his place, 
Stands where I cannot be, or see, or shield. 
God guard Thou him. 

Make him to know the Lord is still his Shepherd. 
Endow him with courage and good sense. 

Put Thy spirit in his heart, 

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STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

That he may be the man I hope to see 
When guns are still and strife is overpast. 
Whisper to him, where'er he lies this night, 
The words I fain would speak could I be near; 
For, though he is no more a child, 
I always am his mother. Amen." 

And finally this tender, sympathetic interpreta- 
tion of the prayers of a soldier lad in his 
threefold struggle to be brave, to be pure, and 
to be true. This little gem of a "Soldier's 
Prayer" has already found its way into Asso- 
ciation Men, numerous religious papers, and it 
has been distributed literally by millions 
throughout the American army in France on 
a neat little yellow stiff card, printed in red 
and black ink with a red triangle at the top. 
I have found them stuck up on the walls in 
Y. M. C. A. huts, in hotel rooms, in billets, 
on trunks, in warehouses, in automobiles, where 
boys have pasted, or tacked, or nailed them. 

"White Captain of my soul, lead on; 
I follow Thee come dark or dawn. 
Only vouchsafe three things I crave: 
When terror stalks, help me be brave. 

104 



"WHEN A MAN'S ALONE" 

Where righteous ones can scarce endure 
The siren call, help me be pure. 
Where vows grow dim, and men dare do 
What once they scorned, help me be true." 



105 




CHAPTER V 
THE ANGELUS IN WAR TIME 

The Soldier — When He Prayed 

Not only did the boy pray when he was 
alone, but he prayed when he passed through 
that grueling sorrow of parting from his loved 
ones at the train and the pier. I have seen boys 
grit their teeth, set their jaws, grip their fists 
until the blood came, the meanwhile mutter- 
ing fiercely, and earnestly between their teeth, 
"God help me now to be strong!" When 
the shells fall, and the "over the top" whistle 
blows at "zero" just as he shoots over he prays, 

106 



THE ANGELUS IN WAR TIME 

"God help me now!" It was as natural with 
him as breathing. 

Somehow France is the land of "The 
Angelus." Millet has made it such for us. 
But if we who love God in America will seize 
the opportunity that is coming, will seize with 
love and fearlessness, with a strong faith and 
a great belief, America too shall be the land 
of an evening prayer, an "Angelus," as it 
shall be the land of a "Morning Watch." 

The great, burning red war-sun was setting 
behind the Golden Gate, for this chapter begins 
at home; finds its way to France, and then 
comes home again; for, after all, most of the 
thought, the longings, the heart-hunger, the 
loneliness and the prayers of America begin 
at home and end in France and then come 
home again, as the boys are coming, like birds 
at eventide. 

Out they go, these prayers, on wings of 

love; wings of mother love, wings of father 

love; wings of baby love, wings of girlish love; 

and back again to nestle in the heart from 

whence they flew. 

Prayer never meant more to millions of 
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STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

human beings than it has meant during the 
last four years. Never more fervent prayers, 
never prayers more drenched with the dew of 
tears; never more desperate, needy prayers 
found their way to the Father heart than in 
these days in American life. 

The great train was pulling out on the first 
lap of its trans-continental journey. A gray- 
haired woman stood looking into a boy's eyes 
and a slender girl stood beside her. The boy 
in khaki had a hungry look in his face, but 
that hungry look was buried in a quiet reserve 
that bespoke the first battle in a soldier's life; 
that first battle which came to millions of them 
at the parting of the ways. Evidently, the 
girl was his sweetheart. 

The sun was just sinking. One calls that 
kind of a sun a "war-sun" because it is blood- 
red. There were no clouds to be made glori- 
ous with rose and gold; none to take away 
the significance of that blood-red ball sinking 
behind the Golden Gate. I have seen many 
such since in France. I have seen them where 
the smoke of bursting shells rolled against the 
horizon. I saw a "war-sun" one evening be- 

108 



THE ANGELUS IN WAR TIME 

hind the Arc de Triomphe looking down the 
great Champs-Ely sees from the Louvre and 
that night a great Boche raid came over Paris 
and left its toll of dead. I saw a blood-red 
war sun another night in a port of entry down 
in Brittany. 

"Good-by, George; be good; remember that 
mother loves you. And, George — George, dear 
— don't forget to pray!" 

It was the mother who spoke. The girl 
seemed timid about saying anything. She was 
his sweetheart. She had a quiet respect for 
the mother's place in that scene. She didn't 
want to intrude her more recent claim to love 
in the mother's lifelong claim. But the boy 
turned to her as the train came in. 

"Good-by, dear heart. And you two girls 
of mine — ," then he smiled as he gently pulled 
them together, as if he would have each 
strengthen the other, the mother and the 
sweetheart. It was a wonderful thing that he 
did there. In a mere gesture he linked together 
for all the uncertainties of the coming months 
and years his sweetheart and his mother. 

He seemed to sense the fact that these two 

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STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

women who both loved him, and who both 
had a right to love him — each differently, each 
fervently — must give strength to each other 
during his absence. He seemed to know that 
each would watch the mails eagerly for his 
letters, that each would scan with the same 
trembling anxiety the casualty lists. 

"You two — you two — are all I have — " 
Then he stopped, but not to weep. There 
was a suggestion of tears, but he kept them 
back. It was hard enough without that to 
add to the parting. The women were being 
brave. So must he be. Then the war-sun 
sank. It left behind it no glory of color. It 
just sank quietly into the sea behind the 
Golden Gate, but the memory of that parting 
between the khaki-clad soldier and his two 
"girls," his mother and his sweetheart, shall 
remain forever, an evening benediction. 

Before I witnessed that scene the blood-red 

"war-sun" was an ominous thing to me. Since 

then I have never seen such a sun sink that 

it has not seemed to be a benediction at the 

close of the day — a "God bless and keep you" 

to the poor, troubled world. I have had a 

no 



THE ANGELUS IN WAR TIME 

"war-sun" turned into an Angelus for me be- 
cause of that quiet, reserved, brave parting. 
I never think of those two women that I do 
not see them together in the quiet of the 
evening sharing their letters from "him," 
sharing their grief, and perhaps their heart- 
aches. I never think of that group that I do 
not see the girl running in at the close of her 
day's work, or her school to nestle in the arms 
of "his" mother, for thereby the world be- 
comes stronger in war-time and peace-time, by 
sharing its grief with others. And all over the 
world, especially all over America, this scene was 
universal. One could see this trio at the boats 
in New York and Newport News. One could 
see it in the great railroad centers as the trains 
pulled out for the camps and on their first lap 
in the journey to France. It was a great Angelus 
of lonely hearts. 

Those who have been in France during the 
war have learned to understand the great 
painter Millet. It was a no uncommon thing 
to see in the fields of France just such peasants 
as Millet painted. I have seen "The Gleaners" 

in many fields of France during the past year, 
ill 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

For if ever in its history France has had to 
"glean" the last straw from her fields and the 
last man from her homes, it is now. The 
gleaning has been going on for more than four 
years, and France made this gleaning with 
a heroic willingness that thrilled the world, 
going down into the family life and into her 
homes until the youngest boys themselves, 
decorated with the colors of their "Class/' went 
marching along the village streets with drums 
beating and radiant faces. 

One of the most pathetic things that I saw 
in France was the visible tokens of this "glean- 
ing" of France. Everywhere, last spring, one 
could hear down the crooked streets of France 
the sound of a drum corps. Then presently 
there would flash into view a crowd of march- 
ing boys who looked as if they ought still to 
be in high school. It was the Class of 19 — . 
As they marched by, one's heart sank at first 
to see their youth and to know that they too 
were soon to be "cannon-fodder"; but a second 
look at their faces and one's heart leaped 
with a thrill of elation, for there was a look 
there that said, "As long as France, even in 

112 



THE ANGELUS IN WAR TIME 

its gleaning, has boys that can go to war with 
that high look in their eyes, the safety of the 
Allied cause cannot be endangered." 

But the real gleaners were in the fields every- 
where in France. I have seen them, the 
bent old peasants, almost exact prototypes of 
Millet's "The Gleaners," with bended backs 
gathering up the last wisps of straw, with shells 
bursting in the fields about them and the roar 
and rumble of battle not far away, and the 
white roads of France that skirted the very 
fields in which they were working, heavy 
with war traffic. Yet "The Gleaners" worked 
on in spite of the war. There was something 
heroic in this sight. It linked itself with the 
scene back at home in some strange way. 

And one may see "The Angelus" group 
these war days anywhere in France. It is as 
though a great Millet were still painting his 
peasant folk bowing in prayer at the ringing 
of the Angelus. 

I shall never forget one beautiful evening, 
when a great "war-sun" was sinking in the 
west, without a single cloud, without a touch 
of color other than the blood-red of the great 

113 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

round disk itself, which seemed on this evening 
to be as large as a great truck. 

We were going "down the line" with some 
provisions for the furthest hut. A message had 
come in, carried by a "runner" sent from the 
major's office about supper time. It said, "My 
boys are going into the trenches at midnight 
and the secretary at Beaumont says that 
he is out of supplies. I hope that it will be 
possible for you to send some down." 

It was a perilous trip. Every man had been 
working from daylight, and no man there 
cared to take that trip down the line. It meant 
that whoever went would have to drive over 
the old shell-pocked road without lights after 
darkness fell. It meant that the truck would 
have to run underneath the regular evening 
"Hate" of the Boche, for every evening just 
after sunset while the smoke was curling from 
the supper fires the German batteries on the 
hill to the east strafed the American bat- 
teries on the hill to the west. Then the Amer- 
ican batteries sent back their replies. Under 
this great, double parabola of shell fire the 
trucks had to be driven night after night. 

114 



THE ANGELUS IN WAR TIME 

Sometimes the shells fell short and pocked the 
road. More often they found their marks 
four miles beyond, but it was no pleasant 
sensation to be driving a truck under a great 
arch of shells going both directions. What if 
two of them should meet in mid air and have 
a collision? Personally I always expected this. 
I had seen two locomotives do this very thing 
once and I never did like the memory of that 
scene. 

But the work had to be done. This was a 
desperate call. A major who was interested 
enough in his boys to send a "runner" to 
headquarters to ask that an extra truckload 
of supplies be sent down so that his boys 
"going in" that night might have their last 
"Good-by, and Good luck" put into some 
practical form, was not to be denied. Be- 
sides, that was what we were there for. 

I'll confess frankly that I for one didn't 

want to go. I didn't like that barrage of 

shells in the slightest. Norton, always said: 

"Ah, they're up there so high they'll never 

fall short. Don't pay any attention to 

them." 

115 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

But I couldn't help remembering that night 
that Norton stopped the truck near "Dead 
Man's Curve" while the Roche was shelling 
the road; stopped to go back with his flash 
light and hunt for a cigar that he had dropped 
out of his mouth when the truck shot into a 
shell hole. I couldn't help remembering that 
he had said that night, "You don't mind 
if I stop, do you, Doc? That's the first good 
cigar I've had for three months, and I'll be 
blamed if I want to lose it!" I did mind, 
but I didn't say so. 

Nor did I on the night of this story say 
anything when he volunteered for the both of 
us to take the load down. 

"Doc and I'll go; we don't mind, do we, 
Doc, old boy?" 

I did mind, but I hadn't the nerve to admit 
it in the face of the fact that I had known 
that this big, brave fellow himself had been 
"down the line" already three times that 
day; that he had been working since daylight, 
and that he was now willing to make another 
trip, the hardest trip of the day, down under 

that canopy of shell fire, on a trip that meant 

116 



THE ANGELUS IN WAR TIME 

two o'clock in the morning before he could 
possibly get back. In the face of this kind of 
sacrifice who was I, just a common helper on 
a truck, to say "No"? So I volunteered to 
go along. 

And that trip shall stand out forever in my 
memory; not because of the unusually heavy 
"strafing" that we drove under that night; 
not because of the fact that we helped to hand 
the stuff out to the boys as they marched 
through our furthest hut down under the 
camouflaged road into the communication 
trench to the front trenches, but because of 
something we saw just as we left Toul that 
wonderful evening. 

There it was, that great red "war-sun" 
sinking into the west. Even Norton was 
impressed by it. He said, "Some beautiful 
night anyway, Doc, even if one of the Boche 
shells does fall short?" 

He had a most comforting fashion of start- 
ing off like that, with some such expression 
as "Fine night for an air raid, Doc"; or, "I'll 
bet the wind's just right for a gas attack to- 
night"; or, "A couple of 'Y' drivers killed 
117 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

right over there just before you came, Doc!" 
He was a cheerful man to work with. But 
somehow the sunset to-night had touched the 
deeper things, which I always knew were 
hidden behind his rough exterior, and before 
we had gone far in the face of that great red 
sun he was talking about his wife and his 
kiddies at home. Then he showed me their 
pictures as we rumbled along. 

Then we saw a sight that subdued us both 
and made him stop the machine for a minute 
in reverence. Suddenly, off in a little village, 
partly destroyed by shell fire a cathedral bell 
began to ring. It was a beautiful sound, com- 
ing across the bare, lonely fields of France 
in the face of that "war-sunset." 

But just in the foreground, two old women 
and a man were walking along bearing heavy 
baskets on their shoulders. They had just 
started to cross a field. When the cathedral 
bell began to ring they laid their baskets down 
and all three of them bowed in prayer and 
remained so until the Angelus ceased. 

Norton had already stopped the truck. I 
looked at him, and, much to my astonishment, 

118 



THE ANGELUS IN WAR TIME 

his hat was off and his gray curls played in 
the breeze. His head too was bowed. 

"I always respect anybody's religion," he 
said by way of explanation to me. 

"Do you pray much?" I asked him, as we 
started on when the Angelus had ceased. 

"I pray all the time. I never start out with 
this old bus down the line that I don't pray. 
That wife of mine and that kid made me 
promise. Besides, it gives me a sense of se- 
curity anyhow when those shells are whining 
overhead and one of 'em is liable to fall short 
any minute." 

We were silent for a mile or two and then 
I said to him, "Well, I didn't want to come 
down again to-night, but that was worth it; 
not only to see that Angelus in real life, but 
to hear you say that." 

And it was, a thousand times over. 

"A man's a fool that doesn't pray — that's 
all I got to say," was his laconic reply. 

We heard a good deal here at home from a 
certain type of writer about the boys singing 
"Where Do We Go from Here?" and "There'll 
Be a Hot Time In the Old Town." They did 

119 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

sing such songs at times. Of course they did, 
but they also sang with just as much fervor 
"Sweet Hour of Prayer," "Rock of Ages, 
Cleft for Me"; "Nearer, My God, to Thee"; 
"Jesus, Saviour, Pilot Me"; "O God, Our 
Help in Ages Past"; "Softly Now the Light 
of Day," and others of this class. Somehow 
they seemed to select, if they were given a choice, 
the hymns with prayer in them. I have no 
doubt but that it was because, down deep in 
their hearts, they liked to sing their prayers to 
God. Especially did one observe this down 
on the front lines. 

I remember a young lieutenant who said one 
day, "We don't have any chaplain, nor any 
Y. M. C. A. secretary, and I notice that my 
boys miss it, so I'm going to have a religious 
service for them myself." He was in the 
Chateau-Thierry fight, and his boys were hun- 
gry to give expression to their prayer spirit. 
They were facing death every hour of the day 
and night. This lieutenant was never known 
especially for his religious activities at home, 
but he loved his "boys," and, if there was 
no chaplain at hand he was going to see to it 

120 



THE ANGELUS IN WAR TIME 

that they had "prayers," as he called a re- 
ligious service, "If I have to conduct them 
myself," were his words. And conduct them 
he did, much to the joy of the boys of his 
platoon. 

"We feel better going into the line after that 
meeting," was the way one boy expressed his 
appreciation. 

"You don't have to have a preacher to 
pray, do you?" another said. 

The boys prayed, whatever some men may 
say. I have heard them praying all over 
France. I have prayed with them in the 
hospitals. I have never been in a crowd where 
there was anything but the finest kind of 
appreciation at the suggestion of prayer. I 
have prayed with "shell-shocked" boys in their 
own wards; boys made up of Catholics, Jews, 
non-believers, and when I have said, "Boys, 
may I have a word of prayer before I go?" 
there has always been instantaneous, respectful, 
and even hearty assent. 

I shall never forget the vesper services that 
were so popular in France in the camps and 
hospitals, usually out of doors, where the boys 

121 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

liked to gather for their devotions. One scene 
is that of an Angelus, where a thousand colored 
men stood under the setting sun, with bowed 
heads praying, just after they had sung, in 
their sweetly harmonious voices, "The Old 
Time Religion." Another scene was that of 
an aviation group who stood in a vesper service 
with bowed heads praying. I had just read 
them that beautiful hymn for aviators, "Lord, 
Guard and Guide the Men Who Fly": 

"Lord, guard and guide the men who fly 
Through the great spaces of the sky. 
Be with them traversing the air 
In darkening storm or sunshine fair. 

"Thou who dost keep with tender might 
The balanced birds in all their flight, 
Thou of the tempered winds, be near, 
That, having thee, they know no fear. 

"Control their minds with instinct fit 
What time, adventuring, they quit 
The firm security of land: 
Grant steadfast eyes and skillful hand. 

122 



THE ANGELUS IN WAR TIME 

"Aloft in solitudes of space 
Uphold them with thy saving grace. 
God, protect the men who fly 
Through lonely ways beneath the sky." 

I had been up with one of the boys that 
afternoon, "Through lonely ways beneath the 
skies," and the whole theme of my talk to 
them had been saturated with my new expe- 
rience in the air under the guiding hand of a 
skilled pilot in whom I had complete confi- 
dence. And so when I came to the end of 
that vesper hour with them and evening was 
falling, I said: "Now, boys, we'll all stand 
and have a little prayer together. I have just 
read you the prayer that the folks back home 
are praying and singing for you as you fly; 
now I want you to pray for them." 

During the next five minutes at least twenty 
boys offered brief— some of them very awk- 
ward but sincere— prayers for the folks back 
home. I wish I could reproduce some of them, 
but that wouldn't be fair. But it was a won- 
derfully sweet hour, and the Christ was very 
near to us. 

When I got home and was telling this story 

123 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

to a great crowd of people in a certain Eastern 
city in a big open-air meeting, an old man 
came up to me with a sweet little six-year-old 
girl. I took her into my arms and gave her a 
kiss on each cheek; one on her nose and one 
on her eyes. I'm always afraid to venture at 
kissing other folks' babies on their lips these 
days of bugs, and germs, and influenza, but 
I'll venture that their mothers won't care if 
you confine it to cheeks and nose and eyes. 

The grandfather said as he brought her up, 
"I want you to have another Angel us story to 
tell." 

Then he told me one of the sweetest stories 
I have heard, of how in that particular neigh- 
borhood one of the churches rings its chimes 
every evening at eight o'clock. As the chimes 
play some beautiful hymn, such as "Day Is 
Dying in the West," or "Sweet Hour of Prayer," 
all the people bow in prayer for the "boys 
over there." 

The little girl whom he brought to me has 
a daddy in France, and she takes this hour 
of prayer very seriously. It means much to 
her dear child's heart. 

124 



THE ANGELUS IN WAR TIME 

The very night that I spoke in that city 
when the chimes rang, according to the grand- 
father's story, the little girl noticed that her 
grandfather was not bowing his head in prayer, 
for, as grown folks often do, he had become 
engrossed in his evening paper and had for- 
gotten. 

Suddenly the little tot tugged at his paper 
and said, "Gran-daddy, let's pray for my daddy 
now like the preacher said when the bell rings." 

Then the two of them, the gray-haired father 
of the boy over there and the little baby of 
the boy over there, got down on their knees, 
and this was the dear childish prayer of her: 
"Dear God, take care of my dear, sweet daddy, 
and bring him back to mother and me and 
Gran-daddy safe. Amen." 

Since then, no sun sets, no Angelus hour ever 
comes, no church chimes ring, that I do not 
offer my own silent prayer for the boys "over 
there," and for those who are coming home 
to us; a prayer that we may be big enough 
to understand, and close enough to God in our 
own prayer life to be in tune with the spirit 
of the Angelus that is buried in their souls. 

125 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

It may never find utterance, save we bring 
it forth with our understanding and our sym- 
pathy, but — before God — it is there. 

One last prayer story: It was a "Y" hut, 
winter, and night. There had been a "movie." 
Then followed the "Good-night vesper service" 
that the Canadian "Y" always held. In spite 
of certain criticisms because the Y. M. C. A. 
has mixed up movies and religion, this is the 
way it worked. 

The hut was crowded with men, and out- 
side several hundred had been standing, listen- 
ing through the open windows. The secretary 
who told me this story, when the prayer time 
came, went out to stop some noisy French 
boys so that there would be quiet during the 
prayers. As he stepped out into the winter 
night, much to his surprise, he found that the 
more than a hundred boys out there in the 
cold had lifted their hats and were standing 
there in the snow with bared heads during 
the prayer that was being lifted by the secre- 
tary inside the hut. Does this sound much 
like irreverence? Does this sound as if "movies" 
and religion do not mix? 

126 



THE ANGELUS IN WAR TIME 

And so let the church remember that in the 
heart of the boy who is coming home to us 
these days there is a deep and an ever-abiding 
reverence for the things of God; and among 
the highest of these things is prayer. 



127 




known what 

hard physical 

somebody else" 



CHAPTER VI 

THE BREWERY GANG 

The Soldier — His Attitude Toward 
The Preacher Who Served 

There are few preachers who went to 
France who did not win out. And proud I 
am to say that most of them won their way 
not by preaching but by serving. They got 
down on their knees not only to pray, but 
to lift trucks out of mud and shell holes, 
trucks loaded with supplies for the soldiers; 
they slept on the ground, in the woods; they 
asked for no luxuries, and went without the 

128 



THE BREWERY GANG 

necessities often, sharing the common suffer- 
ings of the soldier; and in so doing they won 
his heart forever. 

I was never so proud of the men of my 
profession as I was when 1 saw them in action 
in France. Men gray with years, some of 
them past fifty, carried their end of the physi- 
cal load with young men half their age. It 
was a daily miracle to me how they did it. 
I take my shoes off in retrospect because I 
am on sacred ground when I think of them, 
lifting heavy loads of chocolate, emptying cars 
of tent poles, out in the snow and rain, with- 
out a whimper; working all night, losing sleep, 
that they might do the thing that the Master 
counted most worth while of all things — 
serving humanity. It was a glorious thing to see. 

One of the leading directors of the Y. M. 
C. A. work in France, said one evening to me 
in Paris: "Well, I take my hat off to your 
preachers. After what I saw down in the 
woods to-night [he referred to the Bois du 
Belleau], I'm for your preachers. They're a 
game lot of men." 

These preachers will understand what it 

129 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

means to serve, now that they are back. They 
will understand, as never before, the mean- 
ing of that text, "Come unto me, all ye that 
are weary and heavy laden, and I will give 
you rest." They will understand something of 
the thing that was in the heart of Christ 
when he got down on his knees in humility; 
and, donning the garb of a slave, washed his 
disciples' feet. 

American soldiers responded to this kind 
of service, even more than they did to the 
preaching-kind of a preacher. The serving- 
kind of a servant won their hearts. The most 
loved men in France were the preachers who 
got down on their stomachs in the mud to 
build huts; who got down on their backs in the 
snow to fix the trucks that were to carry 
supplies up to the boys in the front lines; 
the kind of preachers (some of them occupants 
of the largest pulpits at home) who were will- 
ing to sweep out the floors of huts, to carry 
packs, to tramp through the mud, to get down 
on their knees to mend a tent flap as well as 
to pray. I do not think that this willingness 
to serve will lose any of its appeal at home. 

130 



THE BREWERY GANG 

I do not know how individuals will be able 
to carry it out at home. Some may want 
to go into a factory to work during a vaca- 
tion, and some may feel impelled to interest 
themselves vitally in the problems of the toilers 
of their cities so that they may know first hand 
what it all means. All I do know is that that 
kind of service won the hearts of the men in 
France. And I know that the spirit which 
prompted that kind of service is the spirit 
of the Master and that it will win the hearts 
of men in peace or war. 

The old "Count" was just an average busi- 
ness man in Washington, D. C. He had never 
had much to do with the church or with preach- 
ers, because, rightly or not, he had gotten the 
impression that they were men with easy 
berths, not very productive, and not very 
willing to share the hard, everyday facts and 
labor of life. He learned differently in France, 
as hundreds of men did, and they are coming 
back, expecting to find that kind of men in 
the churches, and when they do find them 
they will bind these Christian leaders to their 

hearts with hoops of steel. 
131 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

The "Count" and the "Major" illustrate 
what I am trying to say, although both were 
rough men outside; rough outside, but with 
hearts as tender as a mother's touch of love, 
inside. 

"What kind of stuff are you Y. M. C. A. 
guys selling here anyhow?" the Major asked, 
as he stepped down into the dugout. 

It was the "Count" of the Y. M. C. A. 
Brewery Gang who answered him, as quick 
as a flash: 

"We're selling joy, sir — just joy. Of course 
we handle a little chocolate, and soap, and a 
few cigarettes and chewing gum, but joy's 
our best commodity. The other things are 
side issues." 

And from that day on the Major and the 
"Count" were warm friends. 

"A guy that sells joy to my boys is the kind 
of a fellow I want around." 

And thus it was that whenever the "Count" 
wanted a detail of men to help erect a hut, 
or a detail of men to help bury a dead soldier, 
or a detail of men to unload a car, or an extra 
automobile to handle some freight for the 

132 



THE BREWERY GANG 

boys, it was always coming from the Major. 
It was known everywhere along the line that 
the Major believed in that "Brewery Gang" 
down at Toul. "They've got the stuff to work 
with this man's army," the Major said one 
day to a group of soldiers. 

If you had asked the "old timers" in the 
"Brewery Gang," those who had gone in with 
the first division of American troops, what 
requirement you had to have to be a member 
of the "Brewery Gang," they would have told 
you that you had to have a "weak mind and 
a strong back," but if they ever caught you 
saying that yourself, you might have had your 
head stuck in a snow bank. It was all right 
for the gang itself to say this about itself and 
its members, but no outsider dare slander 
it thus. 

This was because the "Brewery Gang" was 
a select organization of Y. M. C. A. truck 
drivers which made its home in an old, aban- 
doned French brewery, the upper story of which 
was utilized for a warehouse. 

It was made up of a personnel of chauffeurs, 

college professors, preachers, teachers, and busi- 
133 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

ness men. Most of them had never driven 
anything but touring cars in their lives, and 
two thirds of them never had had a look inside 
of the machinery of their own cars at home. 

"I sent mine around to the garage about 
once a month for an overhauling, and I never 
turned a nut before I joined this gang; but 
every Tuesday here in France, mud or rain 
or snow, I get down on my back under the 
truck and fill the grease cups, oil her up, and 
get her in condition for the next week's work. 
I've learned more about an automobile since 
I joined this gang than I ever knew in my 
life before, and when I go home I'm going to 
show those garage guys a thing or two." 

The "Count," known from one end of the 
division to the other, was the philosopher of 
the "Brewery Gang." When the war first 
broke out he was, as already explained, just 
an ordinary business man in Washington, 
D. C. The Chamber of Commerce sent him 
over in Y. M/fC. A. work. One thing he 
hated above all other things, and that was a 
preacher. It was as much as one's life was 
worth on applying for admission to the "Brew- 

134 



THE BREWERY GANG 

ery Gang" to let it be known that one was a 
parson. After that it was the work of a month 
or so to overcome this initial handicap. But 
at last, after having seen eight or ten preachers 
in action, the "Count," who was above all 
things fair and just, began to change his 
mind about the average parson. 

One day he said, "All I got to say right now 
is that, after seeing you preacher guys work 
to-day, I'd go hear any of you preach if I 
happened to be in your towns. I never did 
go to church much before the war, although 
I read the Bible every day, but when I see 
you fellows get down on your knees in the 
mud to help build a hut to shelter the boys 
out there who are giving their lives for us, 
I say that it would sound good back home 
some day to see you down on your knees 
praying. Got to hand it to you!" 

The "Brewery Gang" was no respecter of 

persons or of days. Sunday was just the 

same as any other day to them; not because 

they wanted to work on Sunday, but because 

either they worked or the boys "down the 

line" went without their supplies. There were 
135 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

always two or three cars to unload on Sunday. 
At first this went a bit hard for the parsons 
of the gang, even though they knew the ne- 
cessity of the times. But the "Count" com- 
forted them one Sunday evening after they 
had worked all day in the snow and rain un- 
loading a car load of lumber for huts. The 
car had previously been used for coal and 
had never been cleaned, so in addition to the 
mud and snow each parson had a thick layer 
of coal dust all over his face and his clothes. 

"Remember the Sabbath day to keep it 
holy" — with this sentence the "Count" started 
off that evening as the gang sat around an 
open fireplace drying their feet. 

"Well, you fellows may think that unloading 
that car to-day was not keeping the Sabbath 
day very holy. Maybe some of you even 
forgot that it was Sunday. I wonder what 
your congregations would have thought if 
they had seen you to-day, weary of body and 
soul, coming home from your work? Well, 
when I think of my own nineteen-year-old 
kid somewhere in the line; and when I think 
of what these warm huts mean to them in 

136 



THE BREWERY GANG 

these cold winter days, with no floors on their 
own tents, and the mud three inches deep 
where they sleep, and the Y. M. C. A. hut 
the only decently warm and lighted place they 
have to go to; when I think of the light I saw 
yesterday in the eyes of an 'outfit' of engineers 
who have been five miles away from a hut, 
out there in the woods, when we started to 
build them a hut; I don't think that any of 
you ever kept the Sabbath in a holier way 
than you did to-day unloading those tents. 
That was keeping the Sabbath holy if ever you 
guys did it." 

Somehow the "Count's" way of looking at 
it gave our day's work new dignity and put it 
on a high and holy plane. 

"Why, last week when we drove into Gerards 
Sais with a truckload of stuff to put in a 
hut, a gang of fellows, about fifty of them, 
came running out of the woods and offered 
to help unload the stuff and build the hut 
for me," the "Count" continued. "I never 
saw a crowd so willing to help. 'Why,' they 
said, 'we haven't had a hut for nearly a year 
now and we've been here in this mudhole 

137 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

with nowhere to write and nowhere to sit 
down and nowhere to get together. Some of 
us have been walking five miles every evening 
just to get somewhere and see a light and a 
warm stove. That's how much we think of 
the "Y." ' One boy yelled, 'O go on away from 
here; I haven't got any money to buy pea- 
nuts!' The rest of that gang nearly killed him 
before I could tell them that we hadn't come 
to sell peanuts but to sell joy," the "Count" 
continued. 

As we sat around the fire drying our clothes 
and oiling our boots for the next day's work, 
and some of us greasing our sore hands, the 
"Count" continued his evening discourse: 

"And doesn't the book that you guys preach 

out of say something about giving 'a cup of 

cold water in my name'? Well, handing out 

a cup of hot chocolate or a cup of hot coffee 

to a lad going down into the trenches may 

not be just the right wording to fit that text, 

but I guess it's got pretty much the same 

spirit in it. It might just as well have read, 

'Giving a cup of hot chocolate in my name.' 

That's what you fellows are doing every day 

138 



THE BREWERY GANG 

of your lives as you boost those big, back- 
breaking boxes of chocolates from the car into 
the truck, and then from the truck into the 
warehouse, and then back into the truck, 
and then 'down the line,' and then into the 
huts; that's what you're doing every living 
day of your life here, giving a cup of hot choco- 
late in his name; the Lord bless you every one. 
When you guys go home you'll speak as you 
never spoke before, and the people will wonder 
what in thunder has come over you. What 
is it that your book says? — 'As one having 
authority.' That's the way you'll speak. 
You'll be like the old colored fellow who ex- 
plained what near beer was not; and since 
this is the 'Brewery Gang' to which I am 
speaking, I guess you'll all understand a story 
about beer." 

We all laughed and waited, for whatever 
the "Count" said was worth listening to. 
He was a Lincoln in his sincere and homely 
philosophy; and reverent with it all. 

"Well, somebody down in Virginia, after 

that State went dry, asked Rastus what the 

difference was between near beer and the real 
139 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

stuff. Rastus replied: 'Well, sah, its 'bout 
like dis. Dat dar near beer it look lak beer, 
it taste lak beer, it sparkle lak beer, but it 
jes' natu'lly don't have de authority, sah; 
it jes' don't have de authority.' 

"But when you fellows go back you'll have 
the punch, the pep, and snap; you'll speak as 
'one having authority.' There'll be a differ- 
ence. You'll have known what it is to do 
hard physical labor for somebody else. You've 
known that it means to have your hands bleed 
and your body weary, and your eyes heavy 
with sleep; you've known what it means to 
suffer in your body and soul for somebody else 
— for those boys down there in the mud and 
snow of the trenches. I call that a man's 
work. I call that God's work too. And a lot 
of us guys who never went near a church 
before the war, when it's all over, we're going 
to go to hear you fellows preach. 

"When you're preaching on that text, 'Come 
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 
and I will give you rest,' you'll know what 
it means to have been weary and to have had 
need of rest; you'll know what it means to be 

140 



THE BREWERY GANG 

weary until you feel that you can't last the 
day out, and your limbs yearn for rest. We 
who hear you preach will know then, when 
we hear you use that text, that you are not 
camouflaging. Then, when you preach us a 
labor sermon, like so many of you do — thank 
God, when we hear you, we'll know that you 
know what you're talking about. Then when 
you preach about 'service' we'll know that 
it's not all hot air; we'll know that you have 
actually suffered over here to serve other 
people. And, after all, aren't you at last 
doing just what your Christ did when he was 
alive? Sometimes maybe you fellows think 
that you don't get a chance to preach much 
over here in this work. Maybe you thought 
that was all that you were to do, and maybe 
you are disappointed down deep in your hearts 
that you are doing nothing but driving trucks 
or unloading freight or building huts here in 
the pioneer division. Well, from my reading 
of the Book, as I remember it — if I'm mis- 
taken tell me, you guys — as I remember it, 
Christ spent more time serving people, making 
them comfortable in their bodies, healing their 

141 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

wounds, giving them food to eat, curing their 
blind eyes, and healing leprous bodies, than 
he did in preaching, didn't he?" 

There was a nod of assent from that crowd 
of preacher truck-drivers. New light was be- 
ginning to dawn in their souls as they remem- 
bered the Christ, and somehow felt, in the face 
of the "Count's" homely religious philosophy, 
that, after all, they were having a chance to 
serve as the Christ had served with bleeding 
hands and feet. 

"You fellows handled a lot of 'duck boards' 
to-day in unloading that car. Did you ever 
stop to think that over those 'duck boards,' 
over those floorings for the huts, thousands of 
American boys will walk to the only light and 
heat and comfort that they will know down 
front; that thousands of American boys will 
walk over those boards going down into the 
trenches, and hundreds of them into eternity?" 

Then he was subdued a moment as the 
face of his own boy came before him: "And 
I tell you, men, when you have a boy of your 
own down the line, and you think that maybe 
he will walk over those 'duck boards' that you 

142 



THE BREWERY GANG 

guys handled to-day, it makes you want to 
thank God for the opportunity of working, 
working until your hands bleed, and you are 
weary with exhaustion, in their service. I 
know what war means," he continued. "Any- 
body who has a boy in it knows. It means 
loneliness, homesickness, heartbreak, heartache, 
hatred, hurt, rain, pain, wounds, suffering, 
death, fatherless children, childless fathers and 
mothers, sad eyes, murder, and death. But 
it means something else, men — it means that 
some of us are having the first opportunity 
of our lives to live as Christ lived and to do 
his work in a very real and vital manner. 
That's a man's job. That's God's job too." 

And I add that the thing that won the 
hearts of the boys in France, the willingness 
to serve, will win their hearts for the church 
and for the Master over here as they come home. 



143 




•I 

rng. 



"7 am 001/10 £o fowm, Z)oc. . . . 
But I'm only going to get 
my -pants pressed'' 



%^> 



CHAPTER VII 

THE BIG BROTHER OF THE KHAKI 

The Soldier — His Real Attitude Toward 
The Y. M. C. A. During The War 

I have tried in this book up to this time to 
show the soldier in his attitude toward the 
preacher, the personal representative of the 
church in France; in his attitude toward the 
sermon, an institution of the church service; 
in his attitude toward prayer; in his attitude 
toward the social service spirit of the church. 
Now I shall introduce a chapter showing his 
attitude toward the Y. M. C. A., the one out- 

144 



THE BIG BROTHER OF THE KHAKI 

standing organized representative of the 
Church of the Christ in France. 

For be it remembered that this organization 
has the very name of "Christian" in it. It 
makes no attempt to camouflage that connec- 
tion. The leaders of the Y. M. C. A. have, 
from the beginning of its war work, insisted 
upon the fact that the organization was nothing 
other than a branch of the church. They have 
taught the soldiers that it was born in an 
evangelistic service, and that it has always 
been an arm of the church. 

And be it also remembered that the boys 
in France have accepted, with all their hearts, 
this religious organization; and have entered 
its doors and made it their home. They have 
said in word, act, and letter, "We believe in 
this arm of the church." 

To understand this and to use this new 
attitude toward this arm of the church is our 
task and our great privilege and our tremendous 
hope. 

In spite of the unjust criticisms, after the war 
the big brother of the khakis was the Y. M. C. A. 
secretary. Thoughtful officers and men will 

145 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

admit it. He has been crowned in the new 
democracy by the English Tommy, the Amer- 
ican Yank, the French Poilu, and the Canadian 
and Australian from over the seas. He has not 
sought the crown. In fact, he has avoided it. 
He has gone out of his way to dodge it. But 
it has been forced upon him. 

He had been given permission to eat with 
the officers' mess, but he deliberately chose, 
nine times out of ten, to mess with the com- 
mon soldier. He turned down the shoulder 
straps, the commission and the Sam Brown 
belt for the same reason when it was offered 
to him. He wanted no barrier between himself 
and the man he went to serve. The officers 
understood this, and respected him for it. The 
soldier who understood it, loved him for it. 

I have heard of one college president who 
went into a little outpost for work in the Y. M. 
C. A. The secretary who had charge there 
did not know that the new man was a college 
president back home, and the new man did 
not advertise the fact. When it came dinner 
time the first day the new man asked where 
he should eat. The secretary in charge said, 

146 



THE BIG BROTHER OF THE KHAKI 

"O, just follow some of the men in, and 
mess with them. Make arrangements with 
them." 

So the college president followed the first 
crowd he saw, and ate with them. He admits 
now that he didn't exactly like the food. In 
fact, it was pretty hard on him, but he was 
game. The men were dressed a little differ- 
ently from what he had expected soldiers to 
be. They had on white suits, and some of 
them ate in their shirt sleeves. They ap- 
peared to be a sullen gang. Neither fellow on 
either side of him spoke a word to him for 
three days. 

On the evening of the third day he dis- 
covered that he had been eating at the prison- 
ers' mess. On that first day he had followed 
instructions, and had fallen in with the first 
crowd he saw. That crowd was a gang of 
German prisoners. 

Then the secretary who told me this story 

added, "But it made him with that camp; 

the very fact that he, a college president, had 

been game enough to do this and stick it out 

without a word of complaint." Such democracy 
147 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

as this is what made the soldier "dub" the 
"Y" secretary the "Big Brother of the Khaki." 

Then there was the New York business man 
who came over from his easy life, with its 
limousines, secretaries, stenographers, and a 
luxurious home on Riverside Drive, who set- 
tled down in the mud under a leaky roof, en- 
during the hardships with his own men, work- 
ing in a three-by-four room, his only equipment 
a store box for a table, a smaller store box 
for a seat, a candle for light, and not one 
single thing besides. 

He so entertained, and so brothered, and so 
loved his way into the hearts of his regiment 
of boys that one time, when he came to be 
discouraged because he did not get additional 
equipment from Paris, and had gone in to 
resign and go home, but was persuaded to go 
back to his little hut, on his arrival back in 
that hut he was welcomed by his entire regiment 
with cheers and handshakes and shouts of joy. 
He had been winning their hearts in his little 
hencoop of a hut without knowing. 

Then there was that other New York busi- 
ness man, who had never endured a hardship 

148 



THE BIG BROTHER OF THE KHAKI 

in all his life, and who, after living with his 
boys for a long time, wrote to headquarters, 
saying: "I've never been so cold, or so wet, or 
so happy in my life. I have found my fellow 
man. I have found myself. I have found my 
God. In middle life I have been reborn." 

And that boy in one of the camps whose 
heart had been won by one of the girl canteen 
workers. She was an M.D. back home, and 
the men knew it. 

The men soon got to knowing how much 
the women workers disliked having them go to 
the towns on leave, for it was there that the 
bad women were, and the wine, and the moral 
danger. So these mischievous American lads 
like to tease the women workers. 

One day this boy came along, with a twinkle 
in his eye, and yelled, "I'm going to town, 
Doctor." She looked disappointed. He laughed, 
and then added, "But I'm only going to get 
my pants pressed, Doc!" 

She laughed with relief, but called after him, 
"To prove it, you report to me when you get 
back. Will you?" 

"Yes," he flung back with a grin. 

149 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

An hour or two later the lad came sailing 
through the canteen where the woman worker 
was busy, saluted her, and said, "Everything's 
O. K., Doc. Good-night!" 

Surely, if the men Y. M. C. A. workers were 
called the "Big Brothers of the Khaki," the 
women workers must be called "Big Sisters 
in Khaki." 

One is reminded of Hugo's "Quatrevingt- 
treize," that dialogue in which Cimordain and 
Gauvain discuss the new republic, and Ci- 
mordain says, "And in this new republic the 
man shall be the king." 

"On one condition," said Gauvain. 

"And what is that?" 

"That the woman shall be the queen!" 

Yes, the woman worker in the Y. M. C. A. 
was queen over there. When we landed at a 
certain port in France with our little band of 
American girls, a group of soldiers saw us and 
came rushing over and up to the girls with 
their hats off. "American girls! Say, you 
look good to us. We haven't seen an American 
girl in two months! May we talk with you 
while you wait for your train?" 

150 



THE BIG BROTHER OF THE KHAKI 

One girl was to go to a cantonment in south- 
ern France, where she was the only girl among 
thousands of American soldiers. They had 
been there for six months without an American 
woman in sight. Was she to be a queen? One 
guess is enough. 

My friend Dr. A. E. Enyart had two 
striking experiences illustrative of the title of 
this sketch. One was in a theater in Paris. 
An American boy sat drinking with a harlot. 

Secretary Enyart saw him, and motioned for 
him to come over to where he was standing. 

They got to talking, and the boy asked him 
to change $70 in American money into French 
money. 

Mr. Enyart said, "No, I won't, for if I did, 
that girl would get it all before morning, and 
you probably have a wife or a mother back 
there at home, who is a thousand times more 
entitled to it than she is." 

The boy went away, angry at first, but five 
minutes later my friend was surprised to see 
the lad at his side again. He didn't say much. 

He reached out the seventy dollars to the 

Y. M. C. A. secretary, gave his mother's ad- 
151 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

dress in America, and said, "You are right. 
Send it to her," and disappeared before the 
secretary had a chance to get either his name 
or company address. 

Mr. Enyart sent the money, and has a 
receipt for it from the American Express Com- 
pany, but has never been able to locate the boy. 

The remarkable thing about this story to 
me is the fact that the soldier absolutely 
trusted that Y. M. C. A. uniform, so much so, 
in fact, that he handed his money over, with 
his mother's address, to a "Y" man whom he had 
never seen before, and left without even suggest- 
ing that he be given a receipt for his money. 

His other experience was with a French 
official. Mr. Enyart had been in charge of 
several Y. M. C. A. hotels in Paris. He was 
purchasing agent also for all the Y. M. C. A. 
work in this city. 

The securing of coal was one of his hardest 

problems. He found that to get coal at all 

he must first visit a certain official and have 

tea with him. This social preliminary would 

last half of an afternoon, and the ordeal had 

to be repeated frequently. 
152 



THE BIG BROTHER OF THE KHAKI 

Then, after the social preliminaries were all 
over, Mr. Enyart found that he was always 
told to go home and write a letter. He had 
previously written this letter on the stationery 
of the hotel, thinking that it was more im- 
pressive. 

But this particular time he was in a hurry, 
and, knowing the ropes, he went prepared with 
the letter already written on Y. M. C. A. 
stationery. After the social preliminary of a 
half afternoon was over, and he was being 
dismissed with a request to go home and write 
a letter, he remarked, "Here is a letter, mon- 
sieur." 

The official took the letter. His face began 
to light up with a new comprehension. Here- 
tofore Mr. Enyart had not seemed to make the 
man understand what the Y. M. C. A. stood 
for. He could not separate it from the army. 

But here was something that he understood. 
It was the red triangle on that stationery. 
His face beamed as he looked up. 

"Ah, oui!" he exclaimed. "Oui, oui, oui, 

oui! You give my boy chocolate when he sick 

at the war. I give you coal!" 
153 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

One night I was walking along the crowded 
streets of a certain port of entry, St. Navaire. 
Suddenly three American soldiers staggered up 
to me and said: "Shay, you're a Y. M. C. A. 
guy, and you're all we got. You gotta take care 
of us. Honest, we couldn't help gettin' drunk. 
We've been in hoshpital two months, and got 
leave " 

"Yes, and I see you got something else 
besides 'leave,' " I said to him. 

"Jush take us to hotel anywhere; we got 
money." 

And I took them — three of them, so drunk 
that I had to half carry them. This was my 
first personal experience with a drunken soldier 
in France; I had seen only a few of them, but 
they needed my help. 

I took them to the hotel, with the help of my 
friend Senator Benson of California, vouched 
for them and, after undressing them, washed 
them and put them to bed. 

The fact that there has been more or less 
criticism of the Y. M. C. A. from certain 
sources since the armistice was signed and the 
boys have been coming home makes this chap- 

154 



THE BIG BROTHER OF THE KHAKI 

ter all the more worth while to the men and 
women of the church. Let not Christ's people 
be stampeded into believing all this adverse 
talk. It has its well-defined source. Every 
definite criticism is answerable. 

The American soldier is about as "Billy" 
Levere said he was. "Billy" was a secretary 
in France. In speaking to the soldiers in the 
camps he always used this introduction, lisp- 
ing as he spoke: 

"There are three things that I have always 
noticed about a soldier. First, he ith always 
broke; second, he ith always hungry; third, 
wherever he ith he wishes to God he wath 
thome place else." 

From this spirit comes much of the kicking 
against the Y. M. C. A. But the end will 
vindicate that great arm of the church in its 
work in France. When history writes its 
ultimate page for the "Y" it will be a page 
unspotted because of its unselfish service as 
an institution of Christ. Such service as it 
rendered cannot die. The vast majority of 
boys will never be able to forget that it served 
them in their dire distress. The few who 

155 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

are criticizing now represent a small num- 
ber. 

Men who, although in the church, have been 
swayed by the storm of criticism, may have 
their faith renewed in some of the incidents 
that follow showing the love that the boys 
have for the Y. M. C. A. in France and their 
attitude toward this Christian institution. 

While I was putting the drunken boys to 
bed I got their story. All three of them had 
been wounded in the last drive near Soisson. 
One was a sergeant, and the other two boys 
referred everything to him. 

One lad tried to tell me what they thought 
of the Y. M. C. A. He started off with enthusi- 
asm: "W're goin' lick the Germans, and the 
Y. M. Shay's going to help us! We're goin' 
to drive the Germans into Berlin, and the 
Y. M. Shay— is " 

But that pronunciation of the letters Y. M. 
C. A. was too much for his tongue, so he 
waved his hand to the sergeant, and said, 
"Sergeant, you tell them what we think of 
the Y. M. Shay; I can't." 

Then he forgot his linguistic failings and 

156 



THE BIG BROTHER OF THE KHAKI 

started again telling me about how the Y. M. 
C. A. had given them chocolate and had fol- 
lowed them into the Somme line, but before 
he had half finished he got discouraged and 
turning to the sergeant said, again, "Sergeant, 
you tell them what Y. M. Shay did." 

Three times he started out on his eulogy 
of the Y. M. C. A. The last time about how 
the Y. M. C. A. man had brought him in 
from the field on a truck; but here too he had 
to fall back on the sergeant and he said, "Ser- 
geant — Sergeant, you tell them how much we 
think of the Y. M. Shay." 

But the sergeant was asleep, and so I never 
did hear what the boys thought of the Y. M. 
C. A., save when the last one to stay awake 
called me over and said, "Here's nine hundred 
francs; take them and keep them for me until 
to-morrow." 

I took the money and said, "I'll give you 
a receipt for it." 

"Don't want any receipt. You're Y. M. 
Shay; that's enough for me. You're Y. M. 
Shay. Don't want any receipt." 

"Well, I'll just mark it down here how much 

157 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

I've got anyhow," I replied. That insulted 
him. 

"Don't want any receipt; don't want any 
marks; Y. M. Shay is all right; can't insult 
Y. M. Shay in my presence, without a fight" 
— and he attempted to get out of bed to 
avenge the insult I had offered to the 
Y. M. C. A. 

Drunk as they were, they trusted a perfect 
stranger, because he had on a "Y" uniform. 

Another night I picked up a drunken boy 
who was lying in a pool of water. He was 
afraid I was an M. P., and protested against 
going with me. 

I said, "I'm a Y. M. C. A. secretary, and 
I'm going to take you to my room and wash 
you up and keep you all night, so you can 
report to duty looking like a man instead of 
a pig." He was then satisfied and said, "Let 
me feel your cap; I'll know then." 

I let him feel my cap and he felt the red 
triangle and was satisfied for a time, but just 
as I was taking him into my office he got nerv- 
ous again. There was a dim light burning 
on my office door. He looked at it and was 

158 



THE BIG BROTHER OF THE KHAKI 

sure that I was an M. P., and was taking him 
to headquarters. 

He wouldn't go in until he had read what 
it said on the door. He spelled the letters out 
word by word like a little child: "R-E-L-I-G- 
I-O-U-S D-I-R-E-C-T-0-R. ,, Then he turned 
to me and said, staggering as he spoke, "Shay, 
maybe you don't know it, but you're doing 
pretty good piece of religious work now, old 
man; pretty good piece of religious work." 

Stories like these and experiences like these 
make one dismiss with a smile the petty crit- 
icisms about inefficient canteen work, for we 
know that down deep in the human heart 
the organization will be judged by its greater 
service; its service to the souls of men; and 
it was this greater service that made the vast 
majority of boys in France not only accept 
it as their own club and home, but accept it 
with a complete abandonment of eagerness that 
warms our hearts as we who saw it remember 
it. The preacher who can see back of the 
criticisms the realities; who knows that these 
ungrateful words do not represent the spirit of 

the great majority of soldiers, will not approach 

159 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

the average boy with any feeling of chagrin for 
this arm of the church that became the "Big 
Brother of the Khaki" in France through sheer 
merit in serving. 



160 



"You bet your life 
they read itl" 




CHAPTER VIII 

THE BOOK AND THE BOY 

The Soldier — His Attitude Toward 
The Bible 

What has been the boy's attitude toward 
the Bible? Has he been indifferent to it? 
Has he scorned it as he might have done at 
home many times? Has he treated it as a 
book for "children and missionaries and old 
ladies"? Has he felt ashamed at the thought 
of being found dead with one in his pocket? 
Has he been ashamed for the folks at home 

to know that he carries one into the trenches 

161 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

with him, and ashamed for them to know that 
he read it every day? 

A complete understanding of his attitude 
toward the Book will help us to understand 
him better as he comes back. It will help 
us to meet him more than half way. We will 
not have to talk about his new attitude, for 
that would be the most foolish thing im- 
aginable to do. We shall not be afraid of 
him when we know. The knowledge that 
this chapter gives us shall make us bold as 
we approach him. This knowledge shall 
make us feel that we can "pal" up to 
him. 

To know that he read the Bible, and that 
he carried it around with him, and that he 
pasted his mother's picture in it, and that 
the Bible that he carried through the war is 
as valuable a souvenir as the Boche helmet 
that he captured; to know that he not only 
read it but that he is willing to boast of having 
read it; to know that he has it marked up 
with turned-down leaves and pencil dashes — 
all this will make us brave as lions in our 
own hearts when we meet him. That is the 

162 



THE BOOK AND THE BOY 

purpose of this chapter and, in whole, that 
is the purpose of this book. 

There have never been enough Bibles in 
France to supply the demand for them. I have 
gone into the Y. M. C. A. headquarters many 
times for New Testaments and have been told 
that none were available. I am not telling 
this truth to criticize the Y. M. C. A., for it 
had done its best to get Bibles enough 
to supply the demand, but shipping facilities 
had made that impossible. As it was, the 
"Y" had shipped to France and had given 
away literally millions of New Testaments. 
But that did not keep up with the demand. 
On the other hand, I am telling it to illustrate 
the thrilling truth that the boys were so eager 
to have a Bible or a New Testament with 
them that the demand was greater than the 
supply. 

I was the religious director of a large port 
I of entry for two months, and I never could 
keep enough Testaments and Bibles on hand 
to supply the demand for them. We hoarded 
Bibles like we hoarded sweets at times. We 
had a rule that when the supply of sweets was 

163 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

low, only so much was to go to a man. 
Especially was this true down near the front 
lines when it was almost impossible at times 
to get supplies up to the men. Here the rule 
was as absolute as the law of the Medes and 
Persians that only a certain amount went to 
a man. In some cases it was necessary for 
one secretary to confine his selling activities 
to men of a certain regiment, and when strag- 
glers came in he had to say, "No, I can't sell 
to you, for you don't belong to my regiment." 
It was too bad, but it had to be done. When 
the reader remembers that often there was 
but one secretary to ten thousand men he 
will understand the problem. 

So we had to hoard our Bibles. 

Growing desperate, I used to send over to 
England for Bibles. Out of ten lots that I 
ordered only six lots reached me. The rest 
were sunk by submarines. We had to do this 
because the Religious Department at the 
Y. M. C. A. headquarters in Paris could not 
keep up with the demand. 

"Gimme a real, honest-to-God Bible," said 
a big fellow, marching into a hut one day. 

164 



THE BOOK AND THE BOY 

We wondered what he meant by an "honest- 
to-God-Bible." The religious director of that 
hut sKpped back to me and asked what I 
thought. 

I said: "He means a Douay Version. He's 
a Catholic." For we were also supplying the 
Douay Version of the Bible by thousands to 
Catholic boys. I myself had supplied the 
Catholic chaplains with this version. They 
had none of their own and were overjoyed 
to receive them from the Y. M. C. A. religious 
director. 

But this was not what the boy wanted. 

I thought that perhaps he was a Jew and 
wanted a Jewish Bible, a supply of which we 
carried. No, it was not that. 

I went out myself and the boy said, "You 
know — one of them 'Honest-to-God Bibles'; the 
kind that has it all in." 

Then I caught on. He wanted a complete 
Bible with the New and Old Testament. Gen- 
erally, in fact almost universally, we gave out 
only the New Testament. I do not know the 
reason for this, but it is a fact. You could 
hardly get a complete Bible from the Y. M. 

165 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

C. A.; and frequently secretaries had requests 
for the entire Bible. 

The first contact that I had with the won- 
derful spreading of the Testaments over France 
was in an enlisted men's hotel, in Paris, the 
Pavilion. In every room there was a Testa- 
ment for the boy as he came back to Paris 
from the front. One sat down there at meals 
with boys from every "outfit" in France. 
For breakfast it was a doughboy from Verdun 
who had just been in the trenches for three 
months. For lunch it was with a boy who 
had been shot to pieces at Gallipoli. For 
dinner it was in a group of Australians who 
had been in from the beginning through it all. 

The first day that I arrived in this hotel 

there was a neat little New Testament left 

on my table in my room and a note telling me 

that it had been left there as a gift to me 

from the Y. M. C. A. I inquired if the boys 

generally took them back to the trenches with 

them, and those in charge of the hotel said, 

"We have never had a boy refuse a Khaki 

Testament in this hotel, and we have given 

out thousands." 

166 



THE BOOK AND THE BOY 

Up front in the huts I heard some fascinating 
tales of the boy and the Book. In the first 
place, in the warehouses, side by side with 
the chocolate and the toothbrushes I saw the 
Bibles. They were being shipped out. An 
order would come in for "One box of chocolates, 
one box of petite biscuits; one box of tooth- 
brushes; one hundred Testaments. " 

One Testament that I found had a couplet 
inside: 

"This book will keep you from sin, 
Or sin will keep you from this book.' 

The boys were challenged by that couplet. 
It was followed by a list of suggestive readings, 
and I have learned with a sigh of regret and 
joy that these suggestions were eagerly grasped 
at by the average boy, both because he knew 
so little of the Book and because he was so 
eager to know more about it. It was a com- 
mon sight to see men come up to the secretary 
of a canteen, especially when they were going 
into the line, and beg him to mark their Bibles. 
Thousands of boys gladly signed the "Pocket 
Testament League pledge" which reads: "I 

167^ 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

hereby accept membership in the Pocket 
Testament League by making it the rule of 
my life to read at least one chapter in the 
Bible each day, and to carry a Bible or Testa- 
ment with me wherever I go." 

Some of the Testaments had various attrac- 
tive features about them, but all of them went 
like the proverbial hot cakes. About the 
most popular thing that a man could have 
about his canteen was a Bible. Some of the 
Bibles had a hymn on one page, and on the 
other a "Decision" place and pledge. 

The Testaments were not forced on the 
boys. They were piled up on every counter 
in every hut canteen. A sign was put up — 
"Take One," or "These Are For You," or just 
"Free." And when a pile was put up it melted 
like snow on a warm day. The supply was 
never as great as the demand, let the people 
at home remember. Every secretary was cry- 
ing for more Testaments all the time. I have 
seen boys stand in line in huts when they heard 
that a new supply of Testaments was in, and 
I too, much to my own sorrow, have seen them 
go away disappointed without one. 

168 



THE BOOK AND THE BOY 

Secretaries had their own ways of handing 
out the Testaments. One day a friend of 
mine, Mr. Shipp, associate general secretary in 
France, was approaching a new hut down in 
a woods where a lot of engineers were camping. 
He saw, long before he reached the hut, a 
line of men, like he had seen at the Polo Grounds 
in New York before a big ball game or at a 
theater. He thought that there must be 
something special that day and approached the 
hut eagerly. What he found astonished him. 

The secretary was handing out New Testa- 
ments, but he was doing it in a new way. In 
each Testament he was putting his own name 
and address back in Cleveland, and side by 
side with his own name he was putting the 
name of the boy who received the Testament. 
Then he was taking down in his own notebook 
the lad's home address. The boys liked this 
secretary, and they wanted one of those Testa- 
ments with its personal touch. Consequently, 
to get a Bible they stood in line as they had 
done back home for baseball tickets. 

Dr. Dan Poling was very deeply impressed 

with an experience that he had in a hut when 
169 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

he was down on our front line at Toul for a 
week on a tour of inspection. But the secre- 
taries who worked day and night, and day after 
day, week after week, and month after month, 
especially in our front huts, had this experience 
every time a new bunch of boys went into the 
trenches. 

Dr. Poling was standing one night read- 
ing his Testament. A company of "dough- 
boys" was going into the front line trenches 
to relieve some lads who had been in there 
for eight days. A boy saw him reading the 
Testament and bashfully walked up to him 
and said, "Say, mark this one of mine, will 
you?" As Dr. Poling took it the lad added, 
"Mark some good ones now, old top!" 

It was the holy joy of a new experience to 

this good man. But, much to his Christian 

glee, when he had finished marking that one 

Testament, up came another lad with one 

saying, "Mark mine too, pal!" He finished 

that one when up came another lad, saying 

"Mine too, sir, please." And then another, 

and another, and another, until they were 

actually standing in line to have their Testa- 

170 



THE BOOK AND THE BOY 

ments marked — that crowd of boys going into 
the trenches. Poling said that toward the last 
of that line he didn't know whether he was 
laughing or crying, and neither did the boys. 
And neither did I when he told me about it. 

I asked him what he marked and he said, 
"0, Matthew— the fifth chapter; Matthew 
10-18; 11-42; the 6th chapter, 19th and 20th 
verses; and old reliable John 3. 16; Romans 
8. 35, 36, 37, 38, and 39; Matthew 28-30, and 
as many more as I could think of in the rush. 
I wish I'd had more time. They kept me 
jumping. I thought I knew the Bible, but 
those were precious moments, and every mark 
I knew counted. I never knew before how 
valuable it was to know just where to turn, 
for those lads had to go out into the night 
in five minutes." 

"Did they read the Bible?" one who has been 
over there is asked by lip and letter. 

"Did they read it?" 

"Indeed they did!" is one answer, and "You 
bet your life they read it!" is another I have 
heard frequently from secretaries, who have 

seen them reading it in their billets, in the 

171 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

huts, in the trenches, in the hospitals, every- 
where. 

"A fellow likes to have the good passages 
marked when he's down there in the trenches, 
with eight days hanging on his hands, for he 
has a lot of time to read, and that book's 
interesting," one lad said to me one day. 

Another boy after he had read the story of 
Christ exclaimed in true soldier language, with 
great fervidness, "That feller Christ that I read 
about in this book; all I gotta say is 'I'm for 
him.' " 

Maybe some of our dear, delightful, "One- 
way-to-do-it" friends, "one-way-to-bend-the- 
knee-and-none-other-cro wd, '" 'one- way-to-crook 
the-elbo w-f raternity , " * 'one- way-to-intone-the- 
prayer-and-one-alone" crowd, wouldn't call this 
"I'm for him" of the lad, a recruit to the 
Master. You see, he didn't sign any card, 
and he didn't kneel down anywhere, and he 
didn't grab my hand, and he didn't say, "I 
pledge this or that"; and he didn't cry, and he 
didn't laugh, and he didn't shout, and he 
didn't join anything. He just said, "I'm for 
him!" but I've never heard a declaration of 

172 



THE BOOK AND THE BOY 

loyalty to the Christ anywhere within church 
walls that had quite the fervor or that meant 
quite so much as that from that lad under 
the canvas walls of a Y. M. C. A. hut in France. 
And the light in his eyes was like the break- 
ing of a new day along the hills. 

Yes, our boys read the book. They had a 
lot of time in the trenches, and in the billets 
and in the camps, and they read everything 
in sight. They liked the Testament too. They 
kept their copies in their pockets, especially if 
they were marked by some personal touch of 
somebody back home or a secretary or a 
chaplain. 

If some of the wives or mothers or sweet- 
hearts who loved enough to give their lads 
Testaments with their names in them, could 
have seen how those books were treasured it 
would have warmed their hearts as the sum- 
mer sun warms a rosebud and brings out all 
the glorious perfume there is in it. I think the 
richest perfume I ever smelled, such that it 
intoxicated me with its witchery, was a great 
American Beauty down in Pasadena which 

had been warmed all morning by the summer 

173 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

sun. And so your women hearts would scent 
the world with happiness if you could see your 
pictures pasted in these Testaments as I have 
seen them, pasted just down below where you 
signed your names in them, or if you could see 

written as I have "To be sent to ," with 

the home address of some loved one. Or if 
you could hear a boy say, as one said to me, 
showing me a soiled, dirty Testament: "That's 
been in the trenches three times. It's been 
across the Atlantic. It's been in Paris. It's 
been at the Argonne. It's been in England. 
It's been under shell fire dozens of times. 
It's been in gas attacks. It's been everywhere 
that I've been, and, by heck, it's going to keep 
on going right with me wherever I go. I read 
it every day sometimes. Maybe it's at night; 
maybe it's in the morning just before mess 
if it's light enough. I've read it by the light 
of a new day. I've read it by the light of a 
candle in a dugout when the Boche was bombin' 
us. I've read it in a Paris hotel sittin' comfy- 
like in a big leather chair, with electric lights 
overhead. I've read it by the light of matches 

in an open field in training quarters. I've 

174 



THE BOOK AND THE BOY 

read it by flashing my Ever-Ready on it in a 
listin' post. I've read it by moonlight. I've 
read it on trains. I've read it on boats. I've 
read it on rumblin' trucks." 

He paused for a few minutes feeling that 
book with his hand, patting it tenderly as he 
would his dog or pet as a boy (and he was 
after all only a boy) ; then he finished with this 
statement: "And when this darned war is 
over that little old Testament is goin' back 
home with me, and I'm goin' to give it to her!" 

Just then duty called me. I never did learn 
who "her" was. I am sure that he would have 
told me had I waited, but I could not wait 
at that time. But that boy's enthusiasm for 
that book which had been with him through 
everything hovered around me as a holy 
light for days. 

"Her" may have meant his mother, who gave 

it to him the last thing as she tried to hide 

the tears at the train or the boat. "Her" 

may have meant his sister. "Her" may have 

meant his wife. "Her" may have meant his 

sweetheart, and thank God for the thousands 

of sweethearts who sent boys to France with 
175 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

Bibles in their pockets, one of their most 
treasured possessions. 

But standing out above all of one's various 
experiences in France is the great fact that 
the boys have been reading the Bible. They 
have read it naturally and simply. They have 
not been ashamed to be seen reading it. No 
man ever had a shoe shied at him, as Tom 
Brown did when he prayed — not in France in 
the American army. It was not considered an 
unusual thing for a boy to be sitting on his 
bunk or standing in a trench reading the Bible. 

I do not mean to say that the American 
soldier was a psalm-singing piece of piety. 
Never! But I do mean to say that he had a 
warm, friendly, comraderie, human, natural, un- 
affected man-interest in the book. 

I think that knowledge of this truth will 
help us to understand him as he comes back 
to us. 



176 



"I knew youd 
come, Tomt" 




CHAPTER IX 

"I'M FOR HIM!" 

The Soldier — His Attitude Toward 
The Master 

The boys have believed in Christ. They 
have accepted him as their friend and a fellow 
crusader. If you asked them to state it this 
way they would never do so, but to get any- 
thing like a complete understanding of the boy 
who has been in France you must know that 
he has accepted the Christ. It may have been 
such an expression as the boy made in the last 
chapter, "I'm for him," but it was definite. 

177 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

He may not have accepted him in any 
formal way. He may never have signed a 
card. He may never have stood in a meet- 
ing. He may never have said to a living soul 
that he has accepted Christ, but down deep 
in his own living, vital, throbbing soul he has 
seen that the Christ was a man and that the 
Christ was more than that; that he was divine; 
and he has accepted him. 

I think that it is Donald Hankey who heard 
a Tommy say, "We don't know much about 
the church, but we do know the Christ." 

I refer the reader to the story of the boy 
with whom I talked in the tent; the boy who 
was reading the story of Gethsemane and 
reading it in the light of his own experiences; 
the boy who had come by the route not only 
of a crude reasoning but also of a vital expe- 
rience to an understanding and an acceptance 
of the Christ as comrade and friend and Saviour. 

Dr. Merle Smith, pastor of the First Method- 
ist Episcopal Church of Pasadena, confirms my 
experience with the boys, and that is, that 
they are not so much interested in a human 
Christ either as they are interested in a living, 

178 



"I'M FOR HIM!" 

vital, mystic Christ. I mean by this that the 
old story of Christ the carpenter, Christ the 
man who was supremely human, Christ the 
man who lived as we live and suffered as we 
suffer, did not make such a great appeal as did 
the mystic Christ. 

Dr. Smith tells of one night when he was 
addressing a crowd of boys down near the 
front lines. He was emphasizing the human 
Christ. I think most of us felt that that 
was the best approach when we first went 
to France. Perhaps we may be forgiven 
our lack of insight into this tremendous 
situation at first flush. We were so eagerly 
anxious to get into the boy's heart and to 
get him to knowing our Christ that we made 
the approach through the human Christ. 

But I presume it was that the boys had seen 
how feeble and frail humanity was — even well- 
trained officers, even old army men — in the 
face of a terrific barrage. They had seen the 
weakness of the human. They had seen 
that there must be something higher and 
stronger and more eternal than the human. 
So they had come to know that the kind of 

179 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

a Christ that they needed was not a human 
Christ but a divine Christ; a Christ who was 
not touched by bullets and shells; a Christ 
that physical limitation did not hamper, a 
Christ who could walk with them and talk 
with them amid the rain and hail of machine- 
gun fire and rifle bullets and bursting shrapnel. 

It is for this reason that stories like "The 
Comrade in White" grew up about the war; 
stories a thousand times more real than shells 
and guns. It is for this reason, or, rather, 
in answer to this need that "The Christ of 
Flanders" was perhaps the most popular war 
poem not only to the folks at home but also 
to the men in the field. And this poem, as we 
all know, is full of a beautiful mysticism. In- 
deed, as one who follows the new poetry care- 
fully says, "All the war poetry was mystic 
poetry. You cannot name me a great war 
poem that dealt with Christ as just the human 
Christ." 

I had to admit that he was right. 

So Dr. Smith was preaching to them about 
the humanness of Christ, the carpenter Christ, 
when he noticed a listlessness on the part of 

18Q 



"I'M FOR HIM!" 

the men and he felt that he was not "putting 
it over," as he says in the language of the boys. 
Then he suddenly switched to a story and a 
quoting of "Christ in Flanders." There was 
a sudden quickening in interest. It was as 
if an electrical wave had swept over that crowd 
of boys. They sat up on the benches. Those 
who were writing letters stopped writing and 
began to listen to the story of this mystic 
Christ who could be, not in earthly form, 
but in spiritual form, with them and among 
them. What they wanted and what they 
needed was a mystic Christ, a mystic Christ 
who was not encumbered with human limita- 
tions, a Christ who could walk with them out 
in No Man's Land, where no human being 
could come, where not even the most fear- 
less stretcher-bearer or surgeon dared go. The 
mystic Christ was there; men saw him; men 
felt his hand on their brows; men heard him 
speak to them; and you could never make 
them believe otherwise. They expected him 
and he came. 

Association Men tells the story of a boy who 
was wounded and who lay out in No Man's 
181 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

Land. His own brother was in the trenches, 
and, knowing of this casualty, begged his cap- 
tain for the privilege of crawling out into 
No Man's Land to his brother, but the caD- 
tain refused. 

"It would mean certain death. You could 
never reach him alive, much less do him any 
good. It would only mean that in addition 
to losing him I would lose you also. I can- 
not let you go." 

But the boy pleaded, and finally the cap- 
tain, who was human and who had a brother 
of his own, permitted the lad to go out to his 
own brother. 

The lad crawled cautiously over the top of 
the trench. Then he worked his way from 
shell-hole to shell-hole toward his wounded 
brother. It was a terrible task. His friends 
watched him every minute. They expected to 
see his body blown to pieces with a shell. 
Sometimes he lay for a half an hour in a shell 
hole before he could proceed. Several times 
the Germans spotted him, and hundreds of 
rifle bullets whined over his head. 

At last he crawled down into the hole where 

182 



"I'M FOR HIM!" 

his brother lay. He remained there for an 
hour and then laboriously crawled back and re- 
ported to his captain. 

"Well, what was the use of you're going? 
You found him dead as I expected." 

"No, I didn't, sir; he was alive. I poured 
water down his throat. He was unconscious 
when I crawled down into the shellhole, but 
when I poured the water into his throat he 
opened his eyes, sir, and he said, 'It's Tom; 
I knew you'd come, Tom!' " 

And so wherever they were — out in No 
Man's Land, buried in a dugout, or under a 
mass of ruins, they wanted a Christ that 
could come to them. They wanted a Christ 
who was not limited by human weaknesses of 
body or blood. They wanted a Christ and 
they believed in a Christ and they accepted 
a Christ, who walked at night among the 
wounded out in No Man's Land, and this kind 
of a Christ they found walking there, and this 
kind of a Christ they believed in and talked with 
and prayed to with all their souls. And when 
they come back, as they are now doing, they 

will be men who have walked with such a Christ. 

183 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

Dr. Merle Smith also called my attention to 
the name the boys used for the Master. They 
called Him "The Saviour." 

"It was like a blow in the face to me," said 
this great clergyman. "It made me suddenly 
aware of the fact that I had not been using 
that name for my Master much in my 
preaching. But from that day to this that 
phrase, 'The Saviour', has come back into my 
preaching vocabulary. The boys taught me 
that." 

To fully understand the soldier the preacher 
must know this. He must know that the kind 
of a Christ in whom they believed was a mystic 
Christ. And in Him they believed as few men 
who have not walked close to the mouth of 
hell can believe. 

If such a Christ be presented to them, the 
preacher will find an atmosphere of acceptance 
and sympathy. Let this be remembered in the 
reconstruction days that are now upon us. 

In "Out To Win," one of Coningsby Daw- 
son's latest books, I quote a couplet which 
about expresses the kind of a Christ in whom 

the boys believed in France: 

184 



"I'M FOR HIM!" 

"I hear and to myself I say, 
'Why, Christ walks with me every day.' " 

The one theme to which boys would always 
listen was that of the Christ. They frankly 
didn't want and wouldn't listen to a theolog- 
ical discussion on the doctrines. They did 
not want a lecture when they were expecting 
a sermon. They kicked about this to the 
secretaries. When a man came to them on 
Sunday from whom they had a right to expect 
a sermon, if they didn't get it, they felt as 
folks who came for bread and had been given 
stones and, like the true Americans that they 
were, they entered a protest. A few experiences 
like this made any new speaker see that he 
needn't be afraid to preach Christ to these 
American boys. That was what they expected; 
that was what they wanted most of all in their 
sermons; that was the one theme that would 
hold them fascinated. Wise speakers soon 
found this out. 

No reconstruction effort is complete that 
does not have back of it the consciousness that 
this has been the attitude of the boy toward 
the Christ. It has not only been an attitude 

185 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

of an acceptance of the historical Christ, and 
an acceptance of the humanitarian Christ, but 
it has been more than that; it has been the 
attitude of a comradeship with the mystic, 
the eternal, the spiritual Christ. He has not 
only accepted this mystic Christ, but he has 
taken him into the most secret place of his 
innermost soul and has called him "Comrade." 
He has realized not only his oneness with 
Christ, but he has realized through that Christ 
his oneness with the Father. 

One need not hesitate to preach Christ to 
this boy when he comes back into the churches. 
One must remember that he does not want 
his preaching about Christ diluted. In his 
own words, he "wants his preaching straight." 
He doesn't want any lectures. He doesn't 
want to be entertained. He wants his old 
friend of France, the Saviour. 

Drive Christ out of the church, and you 
drive the boy out; welcome Christ, and you 
welcome the boy. 



186 



"On a tree such as this 
Jesus was crucified" 




CHAPTER X 

THE NEW CALVARY 

The Soldier — His Attitude Toward 
The Cross 

The authors quoted in this chapter have 
been men who have been in intimate contact 
with what might be called the souls of the 
soldiers. They are men who have either been 
on the battlefields of France or who have had 
loved ones there, and in two instances they 
are men who have lost sons. They are thought- 
ful men who have delved into the depths of 
the thing, and it is thrilling to see that, from 

the hearts of these thinking men, who are 

187 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

interpreting in turn the hearts of the soldiers, 
contemporary war literature is, consciously 
or unconsciously, interpreting the great 
world conflict in terms of a new Calvary. 
One will find this note in the almost innumer- 
able books which have been written by soldiers 
from the trenches; men who have never in 
all their lives before given Jesus Christ a loyal 
thought, but who feel a real comradeship with 
the Master now, and who have come to under- 
stand, in their fullest meaning, both Geth- 
semane and Calvary. The books of their expe- 
riences have been pouring in upon us, and we 
have been reading them with the utmost eager- 
ness, for we have learned by reading several 
books which have come out of the trenches, 
from the pens of men who never before thought 
to write, that these erstwhile thoughtless, play- 
ing, careless, laughing boys have come to 
marvelous articulation because of their expe- 
riences. And in most of these books one 
finds the note of Calvary struck, a note which 
finds immediate response and understanding in 
the hearts of millions of readers because they 

too have passed through their own sufferings. 

188 



THE NEW CALVARY 

Somehow, in a strangely unanimous fashion, 
every thoughtful writer who, through prose or 
poetry, attempts to interpret the war turns at 
last to Golgotha. They do not all use the or- 
thodox phraseology, but they cannot get away 
from that interpretation. Read a hundred 
books that have actually come out of the blood, 
the glare, the flare, the heat, the hurt, the hate, 
the sorrow and suffering of the war, and in 
more than half of these books, selected at ran- 
dom, you will hear the note of a tragic and yet 
a triumphant Calvary struck continually. 

Coningsby Dawson defines the war in these 
terms in "Carry On," that remarkable series 
of personal letters which he wrote home. In 
one which he wrote to his mother he makes it 
clear not only that he believes that those who 
remained at home, especially the women, were 
bearing the harder cross, but he also makes it 
clear in striking phraseology that he too is 
interpreting the war in the light of the cru- 
cifixion, and he writes to his mother these 
lines: 

"We have been carried up to the Calvary of the 

world, where it is expedient that some men should 
189 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

suffer that the generation to come may be better. 
Your end of the business is the worse. For me, I 
can go forward steadily because of the greatness of 
the glory. I never thought to have the chance to 
suffer in my body for other men." 

One of the most vivid illustrations of how 
war literature, most of which is written by 
the soldier himself, is expressing the war in 
terms of Calvary is found in a description of 
the battle of Ypres. The writer, Dr. A. D. 
Enyart, dean of Rollins College for many 
years, was an eyewitness of this great battle, 
and his description of it has been copied far 
and near. He says: 

"For miles around there was not a spot as large 
as a bucket that had not been shelled, and when I 
arrived just back of the batteries it was a barren 
waste as far as we could see. Intense bombardment 
had been kept up all night, and when I say bom- 
bardment it does not describe it at all adequately. 
All the hells of Dante and Milton and Faust and 
the Bible fade into insignificance compared with 
this. I walked beside the big guns; heard the short, 
sharp firing commands: 'No. 1, fire; No. 2, fire; 
Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, fire ten rounds'; and as each order 

190 



THE NEW CALVARY 

was given hell was let loose. Information was being 
continually sent down by wireless from scouting 
aeroplanes overhead, and following this information 
belching fire shot out of the mouths of the big guns. 
Now and then a shell from the Germans would 
break near enough to where we were standing to 
let us know that the battle was not all one-sided. 
Amid this continual roar I passed the night. 

"At daybreak I was taken by an English officer to 
the brow of a hill overlooking a valley filled with a 
gray mist. It was cold, and I was chilled through 
to the bone. Suddenly he looked at his watch and 
said, 'In just one minute, down there, the Tommies 
will go over the top.' The words were hardly out 
of his mouth before the minute had passed and a 
deadly silence settled down over us. I wondered 
what that silence meant. 

"The big guns had stopped to let the boys make 
their charge as per schedule. It was a silence like 
death. In that silence things around me attracted 
my attention that I had not noticed before. I 
peered through the fog across the hill where shell 
fire from the Germans had previously torn every- 
thing to bits, even great trunks of what had for- 
merly been giant trees. But suddenly there loomed 
through the morning mists, high over that valley 

through which the Tommies were charging to their 
191 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

death, as though it were looking down from that 
hillside on the scene below and trying to define the 
significance of that valley of the Shadow, with its 
gaunt arms extended, appeared the limb of an old 
tree, broken by shell fire, which had so fallen that 
it was caught in the shape of a cross. As I looked 
at that crude cross I remembered that it was on a 
tree such as this that Jesus was crucified. It is also 
on a cross that they themselves have crudely made 
that the Germans are trying to crucify culture, 
kindness, art, decency, tenderness, faith, hope, love, 
civilization, freedom, and democracy. I thought of 
all this, and then I looked from that gaunt, rugged 
cross, looming through the mists of morning, amid 
that uncanny silence, down to the valley floor, and 
I said to myself, 'Those boys down there are going 
up the hill of Calvary.' I could not keep back the 
tears. Just then I did not know all that was going 
on down there and all that this Calvary was mean- 
ing to those boys, for the kindly gray mist hid the 
awfulness of that charge from my eyes. But I was 
soon to know 

"I was to know when, a few hours later, I stood 
in a Y. M. C. A. dugout and watched the 'walking 
wounded' come in from that charge. I hesitate to 
describe what I saw, for my heart is sick at the 

memory of it. I cannot see the paper to write. 

192 



THE NEW CALVARY 

One by one thousands of walking wounded passed 
me. I bowed my head at times. It seemed un- 
bearable. They did not look like human beings. 
They were bloody, mangled masses of flesh; their 
clothes torn from their bodies by the barbed wire; 
some just able to crawl; all dragging themselves 
past the dugout to get their chocolate and tea. 
Then down the line came a wounded 'Tommy' 
with his pal on his shoulders. The Tommy had 
been shot through the cheek, an ugly wound where 
a bullet had gone through one cheek and out the 
other. He was a mass of blood, but he grinned and 
said: 'Aw, it didn't hurt. Both me arms and legs 
are good, and I can carry me pal, who has lost his 
legs.' 

"Then as I stood I saw an English Tommy give up 
his place in the line to a wounded German prisoner. 
I saw another English Tommy light a cigarette and 
stick it in the lips of a German prisoner who could 
use neither of his own hands because they were both 
wounded. I thought of Christ's prayer for his ene- 
mies, for those who were crucifying him on Calvary, 
'Father, forgive them; they know not what they 
do,' and I thought how true this was of the com- 
mon German soldier. But as I watched this line of 
walking wounded file past, hour after hour that 

morning, I saw back of this line something else. I 
193 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

saw that gaunt old tree out of which the German 
shells had formed a cross; I saw it nakedly looming 
through the mists. All that day these scenes kept 
mingling and intermingling: that gaunt cross, the 
walking wounded, and the valley of that morning's 
charge, until the very lines of boys themselves 
seemed suddenly to form into the lines of a cross 
before my misty eyes. Then the meaning of all 
that I had seen dawned on me. It was Calvary all 
over again." 

How vividly John Oxenham pictures it all 
in that scintillating book of poems, The Vision 
Splendid, when he tells the dramatic tale of 
"Jim Baxter." It is a ballad with a daring 
conception of a British Tommy who was 
actually nailed to a crude wooden cross by the 
Germans. Several English soldiers have been 
found nailed to crude crosses in captured Ger- 
man trenches. The Germans flagrantly denied 
and decried the tenderness and compassion of 
the Christ and ridiculed the nation that believes 
in all that the cross symbolizes. I do not use 
this quotation for the purpose of stirring up 
further hatred. That time has passed. Now it is 
our Christian task to forgive. I tell it only be- 

194 



THE NEW CALVARY 

cause it is a vivid illustration of the attitude of 
a keen man's mind toward Calvary in reference 
to the war. 

Jim Baxter is one of those soldiers who not 
only suffered spiritually the pangs of the cross, 
but he was actually nailed in his physical 
body to its beams. There had been a charge 
and Jim Baxter had stood, long after his com- 
rades had fallen, fighting to the last bullet. 
Then when that bullet was gone he had still 
stood, swinging his big gun around him, knock- 
ing a half dozen Germans over as they closed 
in on him. He suddenly dropped unconscious. 
When he comes to he finds himself nailed to 
a cross and speaks: 

"When Jim came to he found himself 
Nailed to a cross of wood, 
Just like the Christs you find out there 
On every country road. 

"He wondered dully if he'd died, 
And so become a Christ; 
'Perhaps,' thought he, 'all men are Christs 
When they are crucified.' 
195 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

"His strength was ebbing with his blood, 
His hands and feet were dead, 
Fierce, biting pains shot through the nails 
And blazed within his head. 

"Below, a mob of jeering Huns 
Mocked at his woeful plight. 
They bade him loose himself and come 
Down for another fight. 

"But suddenly he raised his head, 
His eyes shone clear and bright, 
And opened wide — for at his side 
Stood One clothed all in white. 

"His face was wondrous pitiful, 
But still more wondrous sweet; 
And Jim saw holes just like his own 
In His white hands and feet; 

"But His look it was that won Jim's heart, 
It was so wondrous sweet. 

" 'Christ* — said the dying man once more, 
With accent reverent. 
He had never said it so before, 

But he knew now what Christ meant." 
196 



THE NEW CALVARY 

Linked closely with this definition and de- 
scription of the war in vivid terms of a real 
human Calvary from a character of Jim Bax- 
ter's type comes the Donald Hankey type of 
college-bred, cultured, scholarly English lad. 
Those who have not read the two books A 
Student in Arms, by Donald Hankey, have not 
read the best of the war literature. All through 
both of these remarkable books Donald Hankey 
is ever conscious of "The New Calvary." In 
a hundred ways he expresses it. He expresses 
it in that marvelous chapter on the religion 
of Tommy, which he pictures as having be- 
come strangely and strongly articulate in the 
trenches for the first time in Tommy's life. 
He strikes this note in the expressions of his 
own religious experience. Hankey had been 
long searching for the Christ. When he did 
not find him in social service work in London 
he enlisted as a private, thinking to find him 
in the trenches with the common boys of 
England. And he was not disappointed, for 
he did find the Master. He found him through 
the brotherhood, the sacrifices, and the suffer- 
ings of his brave comrades. He found him 

197 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

through learning the willingness to live the 
experience that Christ set forth when he said, 
"Greater love hath no man than this, that he 
lay down his life for his fellow man." Donald 
Hankey found Christ a vital, vivid, warm, 
close, personal Saviour only when he lived 
and suffered in the trenches with his fellows. 

Add to this the utterance of Dr. Gilbert 
Murry, of Oxford, a scholar who had taught 
such fine fellows as Hankey in their Oxford 
days; an older man, one who could not carry 
arms, cultured, poised, intellectual, cold, crit- 
ical, but who also sees in this war, sees like 
a man reborn, the Calvary of it, and gives 
utterance to this thought in a thrilling para- 
graph of prose: 

"As for me personally there is one thought 

that is always with me; better men, younger 

men, men with more hope in their lives, many 

of whom I have taught and loved, are dying 

out there for me. The orthodox Christian will 

be familiar with the thought of one who loved 

you dying for you. I would like to say I now 

seem to be familiar with the feeling that 

something innocent, something great, some- 

198 



THE NEW CALVARY 

thing that loved me is dying, and dying daily 
for me." 

I could refer to "The Comrade in White," 
"The Cross at the Front," by Tiplady, to Mary 
Shipman Andrews's "The Three Things," and 
to many other publications, every chapter of 
which literally breathes with the thought that 
the war was a new Calvary to the world, and 
that out of this Calvary even now there is 
dawning the light of the resurrection of a new 
morning for the world. What this new Cal- 
vary means to the soldier himself one writer 
tries to show us. First, it means that through 
this war the soldier has been reborn, just as 
the world is to be reborn. "Private Peat," 
author of one of the best books that have 
come out of the war, in The American Maga- 
zine of March, 1918, comes with a paragraph 
that has thrilled the great reading public of 
America as Harry Lauder's story thrilled it 
a short time ago. In expression of this thought, 
that the soldier is being reborn, Private Peat 
says, "I could tell of dozens of cases I have 
known personally of men who were literally 
born again in the trenches." "To be born 
199 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

again" will be a familiar phrase to the orthodox 
Christian, just as Dr. Murry intimates. But 
it is a stirring thing to hear the whole world 
using these significant Christian phrases in these 
tremendous days. 

And Private Peat is not the only writer who 
knows that the boys have been new born, 
that they have found Christ and their Father, 
for John Oxenham in "The Vision Splendid," 
which he defines as "The Vision Splendid is 
the Cross Victorious," lets a boy speak for 
himself in answer to an interrogatory poem 
which he calls "What Did You See Out There, 
My Lad?" The question is asked in the first 
stanza of the poem: 

"What did you see out there, my lad, 
That has set that look in your eyes? 
You went out a boy, you have come back a man, 
With strange, new depths underneath your tan; 
What was it you saw out there, my lad, 
That set such deeps in your eyes?" 

And the answer comes that he saw Christ 
and God: 

"Strange things — and sad — and wonderful — 

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THE NEW CALVARY 

Things that I scarce can tell — 
I have been in the sweep of the Reaper's scyth 
With God— and Christ — and hell. 

'I have seen Christ doing Christly deeds; 
I have seen the devil at play; 



I have seen the Godless pray.' 



Other verses follow, but these are enough 
for our purposes, and then comes the answer 
of the author to the lad who has seen Christ 
and God; the answer that the lad had a right 
to his high look: 

"You've a right to your deep, high look, my lad, 

You have met God in the ways; 
And no man looks into His face 

But he feels it all his days. 
You've a right to your deep, high look, my lad, 

And we thank Him for His grace." 

Somehow the soldier has found his oneness 
with God in the war. I have talked with 
these lads face to face and have found that 
this tremendous fact is true. It is not woven 
of a poet's fancy. It is vitally, vividly, victori- 
ously true. I have talked with lads coming 

201 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

in from the trenches and they had a superior 
look about them. It was almost unearthly. 
They had gone in boys, they had come out 
men; they had gone in rookies, they had 
come out veterans. Private Peat says in 
the fifth paragraph of his American Magazine 
article: "And suppose I didn't come back 
at all? I know I'd be smiling now — and I 
wouldn't be doing it in hell, either. That's 
what you don't realize, you who are here at 
home. You don't know how things get clear 
and plain to us in the trenches. Talk about 
finding yourself! We find more than our- 
selves. We find God." 

If the reader doesn't find this strong enough 
to convince, let him turn to Oxenham's "The 
Leaves of the Golden Book," which he has 
written to console his own heart and the 
hearts of numberless readers who wonder 
what has become of their lads. Bishop Mc- 
Connell says that as he walked through the 
"saddest road in Christendom," on the British 
front, with an English clergyman who was 
seeking the graves of several boys for their 
folks back home, he saw hundreds of graves 

202 



THE NEW CALVARY 

in this desolate war-scarred field with a simple 
cross and the words, "An Unknown British 
Soldier." And here lies the terrible tragedy 
of war. To those who are bearing this cross 
at home come these lines like the touch of a 
mother hand on a fevered brow, comforting, 
consoling, soothing, especially when coupled 
with what Private Peat has said: 

"God will gather all these scattered 

Leaves into His Golden Book, 
Torn and crumpled, soiled and battered, 

He will heal them with a look. 
Not one soul of them has perished; 

No man ever yet forsook 
Wife and home and all he cherished, 

And God's purpose undertook, 
But he met his full reward 
In the 'Well done' of his Lord." 

And to further strengthen and to further 
comfort, and to add the full measure of con- 
solation, Oxenham gives us another word of 
hope in "Through the Valley": 

"And there, of His radiant company, 

Full many a one I see 

203 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

Who have won through the Valley of Shadows 

To the larger liberty. 
Even there, in the grace of the heavenly place, 

It is joy to meet mine own, 
And to know that not one but has valiantly won, 

By the way of the Cross, his crown." 

Then, like a challenge, literature puts it up to 
us as to what this sacrifice, what this suffering, 
what this cross must spur us to. It must 
spur us to the realization that these lads have 
died for us. Thoughtful men like Dr. Murry, 
of Oxford, see this, and we have heard him 
speak already. Oxenham adds his voice to 
this phase of our thinking: 

"For us He died— 

For you and me; 
For us they died — 

For you and me. 
That love so great be justified, 
And that Thy name be magnified, 

Grant, Lord, that we 

Full worthy be 
Of these, our loved — our crucified!' 

And here side by side with Christ this great 
poet puts the lads. Not side by side with him 

204 



THE NEW CALVARY 

as the criminals were, but as brothers with 
him. And if Christ were willing to accept a 
thief into his fellowship on the cross simply 
because he believed, how eagerly and warmly 
he must welcome these lads who died as he 
died, for others, that the world might be 
better! How eagerly shall he welcome them! 

In "The Fiery Cross," a new Oxenham book, 
this thought that, like Christ, some lad has 
died for us is briefly and wonderfully expressed 

"Some man has died out there to-day 
For you and me — 
Died in heart-wracking agony, maybe, 
For you and me." 

And war literature dealing with the New 
Calvary makes us see that not only men, 
but the world, will be reborn out of this New 
Calvary. In "The New Earth" Oxenham has 
one outstanding stanza: 

"Not since Christ died upon His lonely cross 

Has time such prospect held of Life's new birth; 
Not since the world of chaos first was born 

Has man so clearly visaged hope of a new earth." 

Yes, a new world is to arise after this our 

205 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

New Calvary; a new world is to arise out of 
the morning of the New World Resurrection. 
Let this final word from Oxenham in prose 
and a final word in verse sum it all up. The 
more practical, social, industrial rebirth he 
foreshadows in the Introduction to his book 
"The Vision Splendid": "If this fierce flame 
free us from the ruinous wastage of drink, 
from the cancer of immorality, from the shame 
of our housing-systems both in town and 
country, and bring about a fairer apportion- 
ment of the necessaries of life — a living wage 
to all workers, leisure to enjoy, and oppor- 
tunity to possess and progress — it will have 
done much. If it level the dividing walls, 
and result in a Pact of Nations which will 
insure peace for all time, it will have done 
very much. If it bring the world back to God, 
it will have done everything. This, our great 
sacrifice, will then be turned to everlasting 
gain." 

The poem is taken from "The Fiery Cross": 

"The wayward world has nailed itself 
On its own cross of woe: 

With its own hands it hewed the wood, 

206 



THE NEW CALVARY 

It dyed the rood with its own blood, 

And then, with vicious blow, 
Drove home the nails that it had cast, 
Through its own flesh, and made them fast; 

It dug the pit below. 

"But every cross new meaning holds 

Since such sweet virtue came 
Of Calvary; and though mankind 
Still wanders graceless, deaf, and blind 

To his own bitter shame, 
Yet by God's grace he shall arise 
From this dread cross of sacrifice 

To set all life aflame!" 

And thus it is that the war has brought 
to the boy a new understanding of and a new 
attitude toward the cross of Calvary. He 
has faced it. It is his own vital, throbbing 
experience. He has been at one with Christ. 
He knows the cross to be something now 
besides a figure of speech. 

When he comes back to our churches will 
he find those of us who are interpreting the 
cross interpreting it as if we know it to be a 
livid, vivid, burning force in life, or as if we 
believe it to be some far-off figure of speech, 

207 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

some beautiful mirage of the past, some theo- 
logical figment of the church's imagination? 

He will soon detect the difference. He will 
know whether the cross is a living fact in our 
lives and in our churches and in our sermons. 
He will soon know whether we believe it as 
he has come to believe it or whether we just 
preach it because it has been expected of us 
by the customs of the church. 

Perhaps we who are the preachers, and we 
who are the church, and we who are the loved 
ones who were left at home, can only make 
the cross real to him as he returns, if we too 
have suffered; if we too have laid our bodies 
upon the cross itself; if we too have felt the 
nails, and the thorns, and the spear thrust in 
our sides. God help the church to preach the 
cross and to be willing to live the story of 
the cross, that we may win, not only the boy, 
but the world to all that it means for time 
and eternity. 



"This is no time 
for formalities" 




CHAPTER XI 

THE UNION SACRED 

The Soldier — His Attitude Toward 
Christian Unity 

Some people were pleased and some people 
were not pleased when the idea of a United 
War Work Campaign was put up to the nation 
by the government. I think that the vast 
majority of the people of America were thrilled 
with the thought of Catholic, Protestant, Jew, 
working together for a great common cause. 
Whatever may have been the results that 
have arisen since, or the criticisms, I believe 

209 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

that just the common "folks" of America, 
the fathers and mothers of the boys, were 
lifted into the seventh heaven of a spiritual 
ecstasy in their giving. 

One of my most spiritual laymen was present 
at a big preliminary meeting for this drive in 
San Francisco. At that meeting the President 
of the United Railways Corporation was present 
representing the Jews, another great business 
man was there representing the Catholic in- 
terests, and many representing the Y. M. C. A. 
He himself is a big business man and a man 
in big business, and he came home saying to 
me: "Why, it was like the spirit of an old- 
time Methodist revival meeting. Half of the 
time we wept together and half of the time we 
felt like shouting. We sang hymns and we 
prayed — Catholic, Jew, and Protestant. It was 
like being converted all over again !" And as he 
told me the story of that preliminary meeting for 
the War Work Campaign tears were in his 
eyes. 

When he had finished I said, "Do you 
realize that the spirit of this great thing started 
in the camps of America and France?" 

210 



THE UNION SACRED 

"No! How is that?" 

"Why, it is because the men in the camps 
both in America and in France have forgotten 
that there ever was such a thing as church 
differences. I'll wager that there were not ten 
men in the average cantonment in America 
or in the average regiment in France who 
had any idea to which particular denom- 
ination their chaplains or their Y. M. C. A. 
secretaries belonged." 

He was astonished at that statement. 

Since then I have written and talked with 
a hundred chaplains and secretaries both from 
France and America, to see if their experiences 
confirm my observations in several American 
cantonments, added to six months in France; 
and I have never found a negative voice to 
this proposition. 

The religious director of the Western Di- 
vision of the Y. M. C. A. said to me: "Why, 
in all the camps with which I have had contact 
I doubt if the question ever occurred to a boy 
as to what denomination his chaplain or sec- 
retary belonged. It didn't make any difference 
to the boy." 

211 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

Personally, I worked in France for six months 
with hundreds of secretaries and chaplains. 
I knew intimately, as I count them over, 
at least a dozen chaplains, and a hundred 
religious work secretaries and preachers, and as 
I recall them I could not tell you the denom- 
inational connections of more than three about 
whom I did not already know before I went 
to France. 

It simply was not considered. Whether a 
man was a Methodist, or a Presbyterian, or a 
Congregationalist was not taken into considera- 
tion by the organization itself, and it certainly 
would have been considered as a "supereroga- 
tion" of information to the soldier. He didn't 
care what church the chaplain or the secretary 
was a preacher in before he went to the camps. 
This was true in both the camps at home and in 
the overseas work. I doubt if this statement 
will be denied by a single war worker who 
reads this book. I make it with supreme con- 
fidence. 

This truth came to me in a peculiar inci- 
dent with a suddenness that startled me after 
I had gotten home from France. While I was 

212 



THE UNION SACRED 

in France this spirit of church unity was so 
much a matter of fact that one never thought 
of it. He worked with a chaplain or a secre- 
tary hand in hand, week after week, and he 
never concerned himself about the denom- 
ination in which his fellow worker was a min- 
ister. Many a time since I have come home 
have I said to myself: "I wonder what church 
that fine chap was a preacher in? I wish that 
I had asked him." The fellow to whom I 
refer and I worked on a truck for a solid month 
on the Toul line. I knew that he was a preacher, 
and he knew that I was. He was fifty, and 
I was fifteen years younger. We became close 
pals, but to this day I do not know to which 
church he ministers in peace times. I must 
write and find out. 

The incident is this: 

I had been raising what I called "A Big 
Brother Fund." A thousand dollars had swept 
into it in two months' time. It was to go to 
boys in France who were stranded financially. 
It was understood that I would send it to 
France to be administered by Y. M. C. A. 
secretaries. A Catholic mother had given up 

213 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

her vacation to send me twenty dollars for 
that fund, in spite of the fact that I was a 
Protestant minister well known to her. Then 
one day it suddenly occurred to her that she 
was a Catholic and I was a Protestant and she 
called me on the phone anxiously inquiring if 
a part of that money would be used for Catholic 
boys. Her question dumfounded me for a 
minute, and I told her the startling truth over 
the phone. 

"Why, my dear woman," I said, "for the 
first time since I left home to go to France, 
through six months of Y. M. C. A. work, and 
back home again, you have made me conscious 
of the fact that there is a difference. In France 
as we helped a boy we never knew, and we 
did not ask, and we did not care, whether a boy 
was a Catholic or a Protestant. Yes, indeed, 
a part of this money will certainly go to help 
Catholic boys in the natural course of events." 

Chaplain Lagua, of the French army, said 
to me on the boat going over: "It is a fact 
that during the war there has been, even among 
Catholics, a wonderful movement toward a 
more spiritual religion and toward a deeper 

214 



THE UNION SACRED 

brotherhood of religious life. Especially is this 
true mong the chaplains and enlisted priests 
and pastors. One of our Protestant chaplains 
was killed recently. At the funeral one of the 
Roman Catholic chaplains spoke in the cem- 
etery in a most liberal spirit of common brother- 
hood and Christian love. This would not have 
been possible before the war. But the war 
has bound together in common suffering the 
priests and the Protestant chaplains in a bond 
of Christian love that church differences can- 
not separate forever. No churchman of either 
church ever thought to live to see the day 
when a Catholic priest would take part in the 
funeral service of a Protestant minister, and 
stand with bared head, and tears flooding his 
cheeks, before the grave of a Huguenot son. 
It is what we call Union Sacree, the 'Union 
Sacred.' How it would be possible not to 
admire these Catholic priests I, a Protestant 
chaplain, say, is more than I can understand. 
They go fearlessly into the first-line trenches 
and often out into No Man's Land in order to 
take the holy communion and the last rites 

of death to some of their soldiers dying on 

215 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

the field of battle. In fact, the conduct of 
the priests and of the sisters in the hospitals 
has made for the respect of all religions in 
France; and both men and women who never 
before embraced the comforts of either the Prot- 
estant or Catholic Church are turning to 
their altars with bowed heads and tender 
hearts." 

Chaplain Laugu gave me another thrilling 
incident. 

It was a general gathering of people. The 
Socialists were there. "What we called in 
France the freethinkers were there. ... It was 
after the war had reduced us all to a common 
level, politically, socially, and religiously. At 
the close of a splendid lecture by a friend of 
mine concerning Jesus Christ, one of these 
Socialist freethinkers stood up and with great 
emotion said, 'We are not Catholics; we are 
not Protestants; we are nothing; but when 
you speak about Jesus Christ as you have 
spoken this night, our sole desire is to fall on 
our faces and worship him.' ' 

I am not making an argument for a union 

of the Catholic and the Protestant churches; 

216 



THE UNION SACRED 

nor am I making an argument for a union 
of Protestant churches. I am not making an 
argument for anything. I am simply present- 
ing the facts. Somebody else may make the 
arguments. I am saying, that whether or no 
we want it; whether or no we, the preachers and 
the leaders of the church, take cognizance of 
it, arguments or no argument, the fact is that 
the boys in the service have seen such a perfect 
illustration of, such a workable example of, 
such a warm, friendly living lesson of church 
unity that they will look to see in the coming 
months and years a spirit that is more and 
more swinging like a huge tide to that crest, 
never to ebb. 

I say that the preacher at home, and the 
Sunday school teacher, and the mother and 
the father who are concerned about the spir- 
itual welfare of the boy, whether he has been 
in America or France, will talk his language 
of religion if they try to forget sectarian dif- 
ferences, if they cease to emphasize the non- 
essentials of requirements for church member- 
ship; if they will remember that for two solid 

years that boy has been living in the throbbing, 

217 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

vital presence of a great religious brother- 
hood where church lines and differences have 
not obtruded themselves; has been living in 
a laboratory of love where great religious 
forces have been thrown together in the same 
crucibles, which act, instead of producing an 
explosion of opinions and creeds and customs 
and traditions, has evolved a wonderful mix- 
ture of force and power, and love and tears 
and laughter, and social communion, and sa- 
cred moments, and great resolves, and high 
ideals, and clean living, and far calls to holy 
and heroic tasks. 

They have seen it work. They will not, at 
first, expect an abrupt severing of church 
differences. But they will not tolerate preach- 
ing in a pulpit that tends to further bitter- 
ness, prejudice, hate, and hurt that comes 
from emphasizing church distinctions. 

Do you think that it made any difference 
to the American officer who was dying in a 
Paris hospital whether the secretary-preacher 
was Catholic, Protestant, or Jew? 

The call had come to the Y. M. C. A. head- 
quarters in Paris. An American officer was 

218 



THE UNION SACRED 

dying and wanted to see a preacher. They 
didn't say whether he was Catholic, Congre- 
gationalist, Methodist, or Presbyterian. He 
just wanted to see a preacher. 

A preacher I know went in answer to that 
call, although he had been informed that the 
man was dying with smallpox. It was not a 
pleasant task, for the poor lieutenant's body 
was practically covered with running sores. 
He was a loathsome sight. But as this young 
preacher said to me afterward: "He was an 
American soldier, dying, and far from home, 
and I would have crawled on my hands and 
knees clear across France to have served him; 
and I would have risked every disease in the 
world to have carried his message home to 
his wife and baby! That was a privilege of a 
man's life time." 

"Where am I?" was the first question the 
poor, sick fellow asked my friend. 

"In a Paris hospital sick," was the an- 
swer. 

"Why, how did I get here? I thought I 
hadn't left the States yet?" said the young 
officer, in his delirium. 

219 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

"Well, you are in Paris, and you are a very 
sick man," said the Methodist preacher. 

"Am I going to die?" he asked, so abruptly 
that my friend was taken off his feet. 

He hesitated for a moment, considering, be- 
fore he made answer. 

"Yes, my boy." 

But his hesitancy gave the officer a chance 
to go on, even as he was speaking. 

"Yes, I'm going to die. I know it. I have 
known it all along. It is all clear to me now. 
I was brought in here with a wound. I got 
it in the back at Verdun. Then I took pneu- 
monia, and that French soldier came in here 
from another room to be sociable with me. 
He had smallpox in light form and gave it to 
me. I wasn't strong enough to throw it off. 

Yes I'm going to die in France 

thousands of miles from home 

and " 



Then he wept, and in his delirium he chat- 
tered away; but when he came to himself 
again he finished his sentence just as if nothing 
had intervened. 

"And mother and the kiddie. A thousand 

220 



THE UNION SACRED 

miles away from home and her. Write her. 
Tell her that I loved her and the kiddie to 

my last breath. God bless them both their 

old daddy " 

The secretary bowed his head before this 
tragedy. He took the lieutenant's hand, which 
was covered with sores. He forgot that, in 
the poor lad's sorrow, for the officer was nothing 
but a mere boy, after all. 

The soldier looked up and muttered. 

"Are you praying? Don't pray for me; 
pray for her; and the kiddie; poor little top; 
poor girl; poor little top. They'll be so lonely 
without their daddy. Pray for them. I'm, 

I'm all right I've kept clean I'm all 

right not outside much — but inside " 

And suddenly that preacher-secretary's duty 
was ended. 

Boys hear and know of this type of service 
rendered in the name of the Master; not in the 
name of the Catholic Church, nor of the Meth- 
odist Church, nor of the Presbyterian Church, 
but in the name of the Eternal God of every 
human being. Remembering these things, and 
deeds such as the one I have just mentioned, 

221 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

and which I might duplicate a dozen times in 
this chapter; remembering the great eternal 
fundamentals of religion, that "Greater love 
hath no man than this, that he will lay down 
his life for his friends," they will not be able 
to understand any emphasis on church differ- 
ences. And more than that: they will not 
be able to understand any negative attitude 
toward church unity on the part of any church 
or preacher. The day for negations along 
that line is past. They are a part of the 
Old Era. The New Era is here! 



222 



Every mother's son of them will 
want to talk over their experiences. 




CHAPTER XII 

LINKING THE BOY UP WITH 
THE CHURCH 

This is frankly and openly, hopefully and 
cheerfully, prayerfully and sincerely, hilariously 
and deliberately a chapter of enticement. It 
is bait. It is an attempt to set forth that 
beauty of the flower and scent and color, of 
warmth and friendship and Christian love 
which will lure and challenge and call the boy 
to the high and holy place which we name the 
church and to such high and holy tasks as 
will make him feel that the church has some- 

223 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

thing to offer him that is as worth while, as 
full of adventure and danger, and as big as 
the crusade from which he has just returned. 

I do not say that this is the final word on 
this tremendously important theme. I only 
know that the burden of the possibilities of 
that boy who has been overseas is upon my 
preacher-heart and that I want to help, even 
though that help be but a little, to point the 
way. 

Many suggestions will be added to the sug- 
gestions of this chapter as to how to link the 
boys up with the church as they come back. 
Each additional thought will receive a glad 
shout of welcome from this humble writer's lips. 
Even since this manuscript was written I have 
read Dr. Charles Sheldon's new book, "All The 
World," which deals with this great theme in 
marvelously dramatic fiction form. I wish 
every preacher might read that book in con- 
nection with this chapter and this theme. 

Linking Him up Socially 

The social way must be the bait, the lure. 
It must be the scent of the flower that calls 

224 



LINKING THE BOY WITH THE CHURCH 

the hungry bee to that richer thing more 
worth while to him than even the scent sug- 
gests. 

Those who know the young man at home 
or those who knew him in France will say at 
once that his social nature is strong. It has 
only been made stronger by his experiences 
in France, for reasons that are obvious. He 
has been kept away for months and years 
from socially mingling with women of his own 
nation. He is hungry for that woman touch, 
that clean, woman touch which he has missed 
so long. 

His entire social life since he went to France 
has been with men. Why, one of the saddest 
and yet the most hilarious things that I saw 
in France while I was there was what we 
called a "stag dance." Each Thursday evening 
we had a regular dance in which only men 
were present. Men danced with men. Sailors 
danced with doughboys, and it was a happy 
crowd. They always crowded the hut for this 
social evening. They always encored the num- 
bers, and they always stayed until the lights 

were out. 

225 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

"Men dancing with men?" queried my 
preacher friend in New York when I told him 
of this strange social phenomenon in France. 

"Yes, men dancing with men! Men dancing 
with men all evening in a crowded hut to the 
music of an orchestra, dancing and enjoying 
it," I replied. 

"Impossible!" my friend replied. 

"But it happened! It happened each Thurs- 
day night for two months that I know of. It 
happened all over France. It was the most 
popular night that the Y. M. C. A. secretary 
put on. That night was sure to bring a packed 
hut." 

But, in spite of the fact that the boys en- 
joyed their social life without women in France, 
that very thing has made them hungry for 
the woman touch. They are coming back 
home eager for it. The problem of the church 
is to see that they get this woman touch, and 
that they get it under decent surroundings 
and that they get it with clean, fine women. 
If the church fails here, it has failed in a 
fundamental answer to one of the two great- 
est human hungers. 

226 



LINKING THE BOY WITH THE CHURCH 

So socially we must see that the church 
supplies that woman touch. This must be 
done through social life in which the young 
women of our churches take a definite leader- 
ship. They must not spare themselves in 
time or earnestness in this particular. There 
is nothing more important than this now that 
the war is over if the church is in earnest. 

In discussing this very question with a group 
of my more mature women, whom I had called 
together for advice on how to link the boys 
up with the church socially, one of the most 
brilliant of my women, who has a son in France 
and who has been giving this theme much 
careful and prayerful thought, arose to speak 
with great eagerness in her manner. I could 
see that back of the tears in her eyes there 
was a great, eager idea. I could see that not 
only an educated woman's mind had been at 
work, but that a great, overflowing, hungry 
mother's heart had added anxiety to that 
thought. 

Her idea was simple and yet it has great 
possibilities. It was that each church organ- 
ize a "Soldiers' Club." This club will make 

227 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

no distinction between those boys who have 
seen service in the camps at home and "over 
there." The boys themselves will not wish 
this distinction made. They are too big for 
that; but every mother's son of them will 
want to talk over their experiences. They 
will get together somewhere to do this thing. 
No force on earth can stop them. We might 
as well recognize that certainty. So the church 
must provide with all of its might and power 
and equipment this place and this organ- 
ization. "The Soldiers' Club" will do this. 

It might have a chaperon. That chaperon 
might be the mother of a soldier, or his sister. 
The club would be something besides a social 
gathering. It could be a social club but also 
a Sunday school class. In this way naturally 
and carefully the boys in this club, at least 
those who wished, could be a part of the church 
school. And if this soldier's class is taught 
by a live, energetic, forward-looking man, 
preferably a man who has been in the service 
or in France in some capacity, it will link that 
club of boys up with the church in a way that 
will astonish the church. 

228 



LINKING THE BOY WITH THE CHURCH 

Another social suggestion that came forth 
from this meeting was that an evening be 
arranged; a social evening called "Hut Night." 
A "Y" hut could easily be constructed in a 
social hall of the church. Let the women of 
the church dress in girls' Y. M. C. A. uniforms. 
Let there be tables and a canteen. Let the 
evening's refreshments be served over the 
canteen counter by the girls of the church. 
Let there be an old phonograph going all the 
time. As a part of the play of the evening 
have every boy sit down and write a letter 
to some girl in the room. Then let there be 
a regular program of some literary value. Let 
the boys have a part in this program with 
stories of "Service Life." Have candles to 
light the "Hut." It would make a fine social 
evening. 

Link Him up with the Service Flag 

Every preacher who has been worth the 

salary that is paid him has seen that there 

was a service flag in his church during the 

past two years. He has had an Honor Roll 

and that Roll has been read at least once a 
229 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

Sunday. He who has failed here has lost 
one of his strongest appeals both to the boy 
in the service and to the folks at home. 

I met one boy in France whose name was on 
the Honor Roll of my church at home. He 
was not a member of the church, but his 
mother is. He came running up to me in a 
certain port of entry one day after I had been 
there a month and we had had several talks. 
He was driving a big Pierce-Arrow truck. He 
left it standing in the middle of a narrow 
French road, blocking traffic. He was waving 
in his hand a piece of paper. I thought that 
it was a letter from his sweetheart at least, 
and waited with a smile. 

He was a big, rugged, rough boy. Much 
to my surprise, he had a Church Weekly 
Bulletin. Tears were in his eyes as well as 
happiness. 

"What do you think of this, Doc? They 
got my name on the church Honor Roll! Say, 
that's fine of them! I don't even belong, but 
mother does." 

Then he paused as his dirty thumb found 
his name to point it out to me. 

230 



LINKING THE BOY WITH THE CHURCH 

"Do they care that much in the church 
about us guys?" he asked me. 

"They care more than you know," I replied. 

"Say, that's great! That's great!" he kept 
saying to me as he looked at that Honor Roll. 

A month later I caught this same rascal 
showing that dirty soiled worn Bulletin to a 
new man who had just landed in France. 
The two of them stood down by the docks 
where a big transport had just landed. Much 
to my surprise, I saw the other lad pull out a 
Church Bulletin and match my own friend's 
enthusiasm with a showing of his own name 
on an Honor Roll. 

Yes, this gets a strangle hold on the boys' 
hearts. Few preachers have failed to have 
this Honor Roll. 

A little five-year-old lad's father, one of 

my doctors, enlisted in the service. The first 

Sunday morning young Philip listened to hear 

his father's name read on the Honor Roll, 

but for some reason it was omitted. The 

next Sunday, small as he was, he got a copy 

of the Church Bulletin the first minute that 

he entered the church and ran his stubby 
23X 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

finger down the list of two hundred names 
to see if his daddy's name was there. He 
could recognize the name "Jordan" when he 
saw it. It was not there, and he cried. When 
the preacher heard of this incident it made 
him know just what a place in the hearts of 
folks the Honor Roll and service flag have, so 
the next Sunday that boy's daddy's name was 
on the roll. 

But the daddy had been called to camp. 
So had Philip. Then the next thing the 
preacher heard was that Phillip had con- 
tracted the influenza, and for a week his life 
was despaired of. Unconscious through pneu- 
monia for two days of that week, Philip's 
first waking thought was as to whether or not 
his daddy's name was on the Honor Roll and if a 
star had been placed on the church flag for him. 

The service flag will always be a sacred 
thing to the boys. They know all that it 
means. They have heard how each Sunday 
"God save our Noble Sons" has been sung 
for them; and a prayer lifted from the altars 
of the church. This has impressed them, 
church members or no. 

232 



LINKING THE BOY WITH THE CHURCH 

Now comes this suggestion from a thought- 
ful layman of my own church, following a 
request from his pastor for suggestions as to 
how to link the boys up with the church. It 
is that as each boy comes home we have a 
little service at the altars of the church. This 
lad is to be invited to the altar by the preacher. 
The star that represented him is to be taken 
from the service flag and pinned on his breast. 
It is his to keep forever. 

This suggestion came to me with a thrill. 
Its possibilities are infinite. It will link that 
boy up with the church as nothing else that 
I know. 

"What shall be done with the gold stars?" 
my friend asked me. 

My reply comes quickly. "Each mother 
who has given a son in death to his country 
shall also be called to the altars of the church 
and there, in honor and tribute, that gold star 
shall be pinned on her breast." 

Linking Him up to a Great Task 

That must be the aim of the church. That 
lad has learned application in the service. 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

He went to France on wings of love as a great 
idealist on the crusade of service. The church 
must give him a task either at home or abroad 
with the same possibilities of adventure, the 
same dangers, the same sacrifices, the same 
great ends if it expects to win him. 

We have the answer. We have the answer 
at home and we have it across the seas. The 
regeneration of industry; the solution of the 
social and economic problems in factories and 
mills, a living wage, decent living conditions, 
the right to live, the right to labor, fair work- 
ing hours; democracy in industry instead of 
autocracy in industry; "to make the world 
safe for children'' — all these great tasks the 
church must offer the boy, for pink teas and 
church bazaars will not satisfy the hunger in 
his heart for a man's job. 

Then there is the mission field. It is "over- 
seas" work. It is full of dangers; Africa, 
Japan, Mexico, South America, China, Korea, 
the islands of the seas; those same islands that 
lured Robert Louis Stevenson, he of the ad- 
venturer's heart — all these are full of appeal 

to the venturing heart. 

234 



LINKING THE BOY WITH THE CHURCH 

He will feel the lure of travel. He will feel 
the pull of adventure. The greatest adventure, 
the greatest life adventure that the church can 
offer a live idealist who has been in France 
is mission work. 

He has known what it means to risk his 
life; to tramp over long trails through rain and 
mud; and he has known sickness. Africa 
offers that same great thrill in its unopened 
mission fields. 

He had dedicated himself to the fight for 
democracy and brotherhood on earth. Every 
missionary that goes forth to work goes with 
the same spirit, with the same hope, with the 
same end in view as the soldier who went 
to France. Missionaries are being sent to 
China to make the "world safe for democracy." 

No wonder that Yuan Shi Kai accused the 
Christians of bringing about the republic in 
China. "You cannot teach that all men are 
equal; that all men are brothers without over- 
throwing autocracy and bringing about de- 
mocracy,' ' this astute Oriental said. 

Hundreds of thoughtful, educated boys who 
have been in France will find the appeal of 

235 



STAR DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS 

the mission field thrilling their very souls; and 
it will send them out again on a great crusade 
of service, to fight for the principles for which 
Jesus the Christ died, to "make the world 
safe for democracy' ' if the church puts this 
great task, this great challenge to a man's 
soul up to them in the manner that it de- 
serves. This, a tremendous task, will do more 
to link the boys up with the church than any- 
thing else on earth. 



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